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T. R. MALTHUS 



ECONOMIC CLASSICS 



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FIRST AND SECOND EDITIONS 

OF 

AN ESSAY 

ON THE 

Principle of Population 

BY 

T> R. MALTHUS 

1798 : 1803 




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Thomas Robert Malthus, the son of Daniel Malthus, a 
country gentleman living in Surrey, was born on Feb. 14, 
1766. Entering Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1785, he was 
9th Wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos in 1 788 ; took 
Holy Orders ; and in 1797 was elected to a Fellowship at his 
college. In 1805 he was appointed Professor of History 
and Political Economy at the East India College at Hailey- 
bury, a position which he retained until his death on Dec. 
29, 1834. By his marriage in 1804 he had two daughters 
and a son. 

His Essay on the Principle of Population arose out of dis- 
cussions with his father, — who had been the executor of 
Rousseau, — over the opinions of William Godwin. In its 
first form, as published in 1798, it was a small loosely 
printed 8vo of 396 pp. : about one-third of it is here 
reprinted. 

In its second form, as published in 1803, it was a 4to of 
604 pp., containing about four times as much matter : about 
one-twentieth of it is here reprinted. The third edition 
appeared in 1806, the fourth in 1807, the fifth in 181 7, the 
sixth in 1826. It was translated into German by Hege- 
wisch (1807), and into French by Prevost (1809, 2nd ed. 
1852). 

The other writings of Malthus were, The High Price of 
Provisions (1800), Observations on the Com Laws, Grounds 
of an Opinion on the Policy of restricting Importation, The 
Nature and Progress of Petit (1814 and 1815), Political 



Economy (1820), Measure of Value (1823), Definitions in 
Political Economy (1827), and Summary View (1830). 
In 1823 he contributed an article to the Quarterly Review 
on Tooke, and in 1824 another on The New Political Econ- 
omy ; and in 1824 he also wrote the article on Population 
in the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 

The chief authorities for his life are the biographical 
preface to the 2nd edition of his Political Economy (1836), 
by his friend, Bishop Otter, and the review of it by his col- 
league, Professor Empson, in the Edinburgh Review for 
January, 1837. The particulars thus derived have been 
supplemented from various sources in the biographical chap- 
ter of Mr. James Bonar's Malthus and his Work (1885). 

The relation of the argument of the first edition of the 
Essay to that of the second has been the subject of com- 
ment by several writers, among whom may be mentioned 
Richard Jones {Literary Remains, 1859), Bagehot {Eco- 
nomic Studies, 1880), Mr. James Bonar (as above cited, 
and in Philosophy and Political Economy, 1893), Dr. J. K. 
Ingram {History of Political Economy, 1888, reprinted from 
Encyclopaedia Britannica 1887), Professor Luigi Cossa {In- 
troduction to the Study of Political Economy, 1893), and 
Mr. Edwin Cannan {Theories of Production and Distribu- 
tion, 1893). 

In reprinting the chapters from the first and second 
editions the original spelling and punctuation have been 
followed. After the second edition the text of the work 
remained substantially the same ; but frequent changes of 
diction were made, in most cases to improve the style, but 
in some to remove objections by more carefully guarded 
statement. 



PAGE 

The Essay of 1798 ix 

Preface xi 

Table of Contents xv 

Selected Chapters 1 

The Essay of 1803 65 

Preface 67 

Table of Contents ....... 73 

Selected Chapters 77 

Passages from the Appendix to the Third Edition, 1807 108 

Passages from the Preface to the Fifth Edition, 181 7 125 

Passages from the Appendix to the Fifth Edition, 181 7 126 



AN 



ESSAY 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION, 



AS IT AFFECTS 

THE FUTURE IMPROVEMENT OF SOCIETY. 

WITH REMARKS 

ON THE SPECULATIONS OF MR. GODWIN, 

M. CONDORCET, 

AND OTHER WRITERS. 



LONDON : 

PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, IN ST PAUL'S 
CHURCH-YARD. 

1798. 



PREFACE. 



The following Essay owes its origin to a conversation with 
a friend, on the subject of Mr. Godwin's Essay, on avarice 
and profusion, in his Enquirer. The discussion, started the 
general question of the future improvement of society ; and 
the Author at first sat down with an intention of merely stat- 
ing his thoughts to his friend, upon paper, in a clearer man- 
ner than he thought he could do, in conversation. But as 
the subject opened upon him, some ideas occurred, which 
he did not recollect to have met with before; and as he 
conceived, that every, the least light, on a topic so generally 
interesting, might be received with candour, he determined 
to put his thoughts in a form for publication. 

The Essay might, undoubtedly, have been rendered more 
complete by a collection of a greater number of facts in the 
elucidation of the general argument. But a long and almost 
total interruption, from very particular business, joined to a 
desire (perhaps imprudent) of not delaying the publication 
much beyond the time that he originally proposed, prevented 
the Author from giving to the subject an undivided attention. 
He presumes, however, that the facts which he has adduced, 
will be found, to form no inconsiderable evidence for the 
truth of his opinion concerning the future improvement of 

xi 



x ii PREFACE. 

mankind. As the Author contemplates this opinion at pres- 
ent, little more appears to him to be necessary than a plain 
statement, in addition to the most cursory view of society, to 
establish it. 

It is an obvious truth, which has been taken notice of by 
many writers, that population must always be kept down to 
the level of the means of subsistence ; but no writer, that 
the Author recollects, has inquired particularly into the 
means by which this level is effected : and it is a view of 
these means, which forms, to his mind, the strongest obstacle 
in the way to any very great future improvement of society. 
He hopes it will appear, that, in the discussion of this inter- 
esting subject, he is actuated solely by a love of truth ; and 
not by any prejudice against any particular set of men, or 
of opinions. He professes to have read some of the specu- 
lations on the future improvement of society, in a temper 
very different from a wish to find them visionary ; but he 
has not acquired that command over his understanding, 
which would enable him to believe what he wishes, without 
evidence, or to refuse his assent to what might be unpleasing, 
when accompanied with evidence. 

The view which he has given of human life has a melan- 
choly hue \ but he feels conscious, that he has drawn these 
dark tints, from a conviction that they are really in the pict- 
ure ; and not from a jaundiced eye, or an inherent spleen 
of disposition. The theory of mind which he has sketched 
in the two last chapters, accounts to his own understanding, 
in a satisfactory manner, for the existence of most of the 
evils of life ; but whether it will have the same effect upon 
others, must be left to the judgment of his readers. 



PREFACE. xiii 

If he should succeed in drawing the attention of more 
able men, to what he conceives to be the principal difficulty 
in the way to the improvement of society, and should, in 
consequence, see this difficulty removed, even in theory, he 
will gladly retract his present opinions, and rejoice in a con- 
viction of his error. 

June 7, 1798. 



CONTENTS. 1 



CHAP. I. 

Question stated. — Little prospect of a determination of i(, from the 
enmity of the opposing parties. — The principal argument against 
the perfectibility of man and of society has never been fairly 
answered. — Nature of the difficulty arising from population. — 
Outline of the principal argument of the essay. page i 

CHAP. II. 

The different ratios in which popidation and food increase. — The 
necessary effects of these different ratios of increase. — Oscillation 
produced by them in the condition of the loiver classes of society. — 
Reasons why this oscillation has not been so much observed as 
might be expected. — Three propositions on which the general argu- 
ment of the essay depends. — The different states in which mankind 
have been known to exist proposed to be examined with reference to 
these three propositions. p. g 

CHAP. III. 

The savage or hunter state shortly reviewed. — The shepherd state, or 
the tribes of barbarians that overran the Roman Empire. — The 
superiority of the power of poptdation to the means of subsistence, 
the cause of the great tide of Northern Emigration. 

1 The original tables of contents are given in order to display the char- 
acter of the portions of the two Essays not reprinted. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. IV. 

State of civilized nations. — Probability that Europe is much more 
poptdous now than in the time of Julius Ccesar. — Best criterion 
of population. — Probable error of Hume in one of the criterions 
that he proposes as assisting in an estimate of population. — Slow 
increase of population at present in most of the states of Europe. — 
The two principal checks to population. — The first, or preventive 
check, examined with regard to England. p. 19 

CHAP. V. 

The second, or positive check to poptdation examined, in England. — 
The true cause why the immense sunt collected in England for the 
poor does not better their condition. — The powerful tendency of the 
poor laws to defeat their own purpose. — Palliative of the distresses 
of the poor proposed. — The absolute impossibility from the fixed 
laws of our nature, that the pressure of want can ever be completely 
removed from the lower classes of society. — All the checks to popu- 
lation may be resolved into misery or vice. p. 24 

CHAP. VI. 

New colonies. — Reasons of their rapid increase. — North American 
Colonies. — Extraordinary instance of increase in the back settle- 
ments. — Rapidity with which even old states recover the ravages of 
war, pestilence, famine, or the convulsions of nature. 

CHAP. VII. 

A probable cause of epidemics. — Extracts from Mr. SusmilcWs tables. 

— Periodical returns of sickly seasons to be expected in certain 
cases. — Proportion of births to burials for short periods in any 
country an inadequate criterion of the real average increase of 
population. — Best criterion of a permanent increase of poptdation. 

— Great frugality of living one of the causes of the famines of 
China and Indostan. — Evil tendency op' one of the clauses in Mr. 



CONTENTS. xvii 

PitCs Poor Bill. — Only one proper way of encouraging popula- 
tion. — Causes of the happiness of nations. — Famine the last and 
most dreadful mode by which nature represses a redundant popula- 
tion. — The three propositions considered as established. p. 39 

CHAP. VIII. 

Mr. Wallace. — Error of supposing that the difficulty arising from 
population is at a great distance. — Mr. Condorcet 's sketch of the 
progress of the human mind. — Period when the oscillation, men- 
tioned by Mr. Condorcet, ought to be applied to the human race. 

CHAP. IX. 

Mr. Condor eel's conjecture concerning the organic perfectibility of man, 
and the indefinite prolongation of human life. — Fallacy of the argu- 
ment, -which infers an unlimited progress from a partial improve- 
ment, the limit of which cannot be ascertained, illustrated in the 
breeding of animals, and the cultivation of plants. 

CHAP. X. 

Mr. Godzuin's system of equality. — Error of attributing all the vices of 
mankind to human institutions. — Mr. Godwins first answer to 
the difficulty arising from population totally insufficient. — Mr. 
Godwins beautiful system of society supposed to be realized. — Its 
utter destruction simply from the principle of population in so 
short a time as thirty years. p. 46 

CHAP. XI. 

Mr. Godzuin's conjecture concerning the future extinction of the passion 
between the sexes. — Little apparent grounds for such a conjecture. 
— Passion of love not inconsistent either with reason or virtue. 

CHAP. XII. 

Mr. Godzvirts conjecture concerning the indefinite prolongation of 
human life. — Improper inference drawn from the effects of mental 
stimulants on the human frame, illustrated in various instances. 



xviii CONTENTS. 

— Conjectures not founded on any indications in the past, not to be 
considered as philosophical conjectttres. — Air. Godwin 's and Mr. 
Condor cet' 's conjecture respecting the approach of man towards im- 
mortality on earth, a curious instance of the inconsistency of 
scepticism. 

CHAP. XIII. 

Error of Mr. Godwin in considering man too much in the light of a 
being ?7ierely rational. — In the compound being, man, the passions 
ivill always act as disturbing forces in the decisions of the under- 
standing. — Reasonings of Mr. Godwin on the subject of coercion. 

— Some truths of a nature not to be communicated from one man 
to another. 

CHAP. XIV. 

Mr. Godwin's five propositions respecting political truth, on which his 
zvhole work hinges, not established. — Reasons we have for suppos- 
ing, from the distress occasioned by the principle of population, 
that the vices, and moral weaknesses of man can never be wholly 
eradicated. — Perfectibility, in the sense in which Mr. Godwin 
uses the term, not applicable to man. — Nature of the real per- 
fectibility of man illustrated. 

CHAP. XV. 

Models too perfect, may sometimes rather ii7ipede than promote improve- 
ment. — Air. Godwin's essay on avarice and profusion. — Im- 
possibility of dividing the necessary labour of a society amicably 
among all. — Invectives against labour may produce present evil, 
with little or no chance of producing future good. — An accession to 
the mass of agricultural labour must ahoays be an advantage to 
the labourer. 

CHAP. XVI. 

Probable error of Dr. Adam Smith in representing every increase of 
the revenue or stock of a society as an increase i?i the funds for the 
maintenance of labour. — Instances where an increase of wealth 
can have no tendency to better the condition of the labouring poor. 

— England has increased in riches without a proportional increase 



CONTENTS. xix 

in the fzmds for the maintenance of labour. — The state of the poor 
in China zaould not be improved by an increase of wealth from 
manufactures. 

CHAP. XVII. 

Question of the proper definition of the wealth of a state. — Reason given 
by the French Economists for considering all manufacturers as 
unproductive labourers, not the true reason. — The labour of arti- 
ficers and manufacturers sufficiently productive to individuals, 
though not to the state. — A remarkable passage in Dr. Price's two 
volumes of observations. — Error of Dr. Price in attributing the 
happiness and rapid population of America, chiefly, to its peculiar 
state of civilization. — No advantage can be expected from shutting 
our eyes to the difficulties in the way to the improvement of society. 

CHAP. XVIII. 

The constant pressure of distress on man, from the principle of popula- 
tion, seems to direct our hopes to the future. — State of trial incon- 
sistent with our ideas of the foreknowledge of God. — The world, 
probably, a mighty process for awakening matter into miitd. — 
Theory of the formation of mind. — Excitements from the wants of 
the body. — Excitements from the operation of general laws. — 
Excitements from the difficulties of life arising from the principle 
of population. 

CHAP. XIX. 

The sorrozvs of life necessary to soften and humanize the heart. — The 
exciteijtents of social sympathy often produce characters of a higher 
order than the mere possessors of talents. — Moral evil probably 
necessary to the production of moral excellence. — Excitements from 
intellectual wants continually kept up by the infinite variety of 
nature, and the obscurity that involves metaphysical subjects. — The 
difficulties in Revelation to be accounted for upon this principle. 
— The degree of evidence which the scriptures contain, probably, 
best suited to the improvement of the human faculties, and the moral 
amelioration of mankind. — The idea that mind is created by 
excitements, seems to account for the existence of natural and 
moral evil. 



AN ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLE OF 
POPULATION. 



CHAPTER I. 

Question stated. — Little prospect of a determination of it, from the en- 
mity of the opposing parties. — The principal argument against the 
perfectibility of man and of society has never been fairly answered. 
— A r alure of the difficulty arising from population. — Outline of the 
principal argument of the essay. 

The great and unlooked for discoveries that have taken 
place of late years in natural philosophy ; the increasing dif- 
fusion of general knowledge from the extension of the art of 
printing ; the ardent and unshackled spirit of inquiry that 
prevails throughout the lettered, and even unlettered world ; 
the new and extraordinary lights that have been thrown on 
political subjects, which dazzle and astonish the understand- 
ing ; and particularly that tremendous phenomenon in the 
political horizon the French Revolution, which, like a blaz- 
ing comet, seems destined either to inspire with fresh life 
and vigour, or to scorch up and destroy the thinking inhabi- 
tants of the earth, have all concurred to lead able men into 
the opinion, that we were touching upon a period big with 
the most important changes, changes that would in some 
measure be decisive of the future fate of mankind. 

It has been said, that the great question is now at issue, 
whether man shall henceforth start forwards with accelerated 
velocity towards illimitable, and hitherto unconceived im- 
b 1 



2 AN ESSAY ON THE 

provement ; or be condemned to a perpetual oscillation be- 
tween happiness and misery, and after every effort remain 
still at an immeasurable distance from the wished -for goal. 

Yet, anxiously as every friend of mankind must look for- 
wards to the termination of this painful suspense ; and, 
eagerly as the inquiring mind would hail every ray of light 
that might assist its view into futurity, it is much to be 
lamented, that the writers on each side of this momentous 
question still keep far aloof from each other. Their mutual 
arguments do not meet with a candid examination. The 
question is not brought to rest on fewer points ; and even in 
theory scarcely seems to be approaching to a decision. 

The advocate for the present order of things, is apt to 
treat the sect of speculative philosophers, either as a set of 
artful and designing knaves, who preach up ardent benevo- 
lence, and draw captivating pictures of a happier state of 
society, only the better to enable them to destroy the pres- 
ent establishments, and to forward their own deep-laid 
schemes of ambition : or, as wild and mad-headed enthusi- 
asts, whose silly speculations, and absurd paradoxes, are not 
worthy the attention of any reasonable man. 

The advocate for the perfectibility of man, and of society, 
retorts on the defender of establishments a more than equal 
contempt. He brands him as the slave of the most miser- 
able, and narrow prejudices ; or, as the defender of the 
abuses of civil society, only because he profits by them. 
He paints him either as a character who prostitutes his 
understanding to his interest ; or as one whose powers of 
mind are not of a size to grasp anything great and noble ; 
who cannot see above five yards before him ; and who 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 3 

must therefore be utterly unable to take in the views of the 
enlightened benefactor of mankind. 

In this unamicable contest, the cause of truth cannot but 
suffer. The really good arguments on each side of the ques- 
tion are not allowed to have their proper weight. Each pur- 
sues his own theory, little solicitous to correct, or improve 
it, by an attention to what is advanced by his opponents. 

The friend of the present order of things condemns all 
political speculations in the gross. He will not even conde- 
scend to examine the grounds from which the perfectibility 
of society is inferred. Much less will he give himself the 
trouble in a fair and candid manner to attempt an exposi- 
tion of their fallacy. 

The speculative philosopher equally offends against the 
cause of truth. With eyes fixed on a happier state of soci- 
ety, the blessings of which he paints in the most captivating 
colours, he allows himself to indulge in the most bitter invec- 
tives against every present establishment, without applying 
his talents to consider the best and safest means of removing 
abuses, and without seeming to be aware of the tremendous 
obstacles that threaten, even in theory, to oppose the pro- 
gress of man towards perfection. 

It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy, that a just 
theory will always be confirmed by experiment. Yet so 
much friction, and so many minute circumstances occur in 
practice, which it is next to impossible for the most en- 
larged and penetrating mind to foresee, that on few subjects 
can any theory be pronounced just, that has not stood the 
test of experience. But an untried theory cannot be ad- 
vanced as probable, much less as just, till all the arguments 



4 AN ESSAY ON THE 

against it have been maturely weighed, and clearly and 
consistently confuted. 

I have read some of the speculations on the perfectibility 
of man and of society with great pleasure. I have been 
warmed and delighted with the enchanting picture which they 
hold forth. 1 ardently wish for such happy improvements. 
But I see great, and, to my understanding, unconquerable 
difficulties in the way to them. These difficulties it is my 
present purpose to state ; declaring, at the same time, that 
so far from exulting in them, as a cause of triumphing over 
the friends of innovation, nothing would give me greater 
pleasure than to see them completely removed. 

The most important argument that I shall adduce is cer- 
tainly not new. The principles on which it depends have 
been explained in part by Hume, and more at large by Dr. 
Adam Smith. It has been advanced and applied to the 
present subject, though not with its proper weight, or in 
the most forcible point of view, by Mr. Wallace : and it 
may probably have been stated by many writers that I 
have never met with. I should certainly, therefore, not 
think of advancing it again, though I mean to place it in a 
point of view in some degree different from any that I have 
hitherto seen, if it had ever been fairly and satisfactorily 
answered. 

The cause of this neglect on the part of the advocates for 
the perfectibility of mankind is not easily accounted for. I 
cannot doubt the talents of such men as Godwin and 
Condorcet. I am unwilling to doubt their candour. To 
my understanding, and probably to that of most others, the 
difficulty appears insurmountable. Yet these men of ac- 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 5 

knowledged ability and penetration, scarcely deign to notice 
it, and hold on their course in such speculations, with un- 
abated ardour and undiminished confidence. I have certainly 
no right to say that they purposely shut their eyes to such 
arguments. I ought rather to doubt the validity of them, 
when neglected by such men, however forcibly their truth 
may strike my own mind. Yet in this respect it must be 
acknowledged that we are all of us too prone to err. If I 
saw a glass of wine repeatedly presented to a man, and he 
took no notice of it, I should be apt to think that he was 
blind or uncivil. A juster philosophy might teach me rather 
to think that my eyes deceived me, and that the offer was 
not really what I conceived it to be. 

In entering upon the argument I must premise that I 
put out of the question, at present, all mere conjectures ; 
that is, all suppositions, the probable realization of which 
cannot be inferred upon any just philosophical grounds. A 
writer may tell me that he thinks man will ultimately become 
an ostrich. I cannot properly contradict him. But before he 
can expect to bring any reasonable person over to his opinion, 
he ought to show that the necks of mankind have been 
gradually elongating ; that the lips have grown harder, and 
more prominent ; that the legs and feet are daily altering 
their shape ; and that the hair is beginning to change into 
stubs of feathers. And till the probability of so wonderful 
a conversion can be shown, it is surely lost time and lost 
eloquence to expatiate on the happiness of man in such a 
state ; to describe his powers, both of running and flying ; 
to paint him in a condition where all narrow luxuries would 
be contemned ; where he would be employed only in col- 



6 AN ESSAY ON THE 

lecting the necessaries of life; and where, consequently, 
each man's share of labour would be light, and his portion 
of leisure ample. 

I think I may fairly make two postulata. 

First, That food is necessary to the existence of man. 

Secondly, That the passion between the sexes is necessary, 
and will remain nearly in its present state. 

These two laws ever since we have had any knowledge 
of mankind, appear to have been fixed laws of our nature ; 
and, as we have not hitherto seen any alteration in them, we 
have no right to conclude that they will ever cease to be 
what they are now, without an immediate act of power in 
that Being who first arranged the system of the universe ; 
and for the advantage of his creatures, still executes, accord- 
ing to fixed laws, all its various operations. 

I do not know that any writer has supposed that on this 
earth man will ultimately be able to live without food. But 
Mr. Godwin has conjectured that the passion between the 
sexes may in time be extinguished. As, however, he calls 
this part of his work, a deviation into the land of conject- 
ure, I will not dwell longer upon it at present, than to say, 
that the best arguments for the perfectibility of man are 
drawn from a contemplation of the great progress that he 
has already made from the savage state, and the difficulty 
of saying where he is to stop. But towards the extinction 
of the passion between the sexes, no progress whatever has 
hitherto been made. It appears to exist in as much force 
at present as it did two thousand, or four thousand years 
ago. There are individual exceptions now as there always 
have been. But, as these exceptions do not appear to in- 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 7 

crease in number, it would surely be a very unphilosophical 
mode of arguing, to infer merely from the existence of an 
exception, that the exception would, in time, become the 
rule, and the rule the exception. 

Assuming, then, my postulata as granted, I say, that the 
power of population is indefinitely greater than the power 
in the earth to produce subsistence for man. 

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical 
ratio. Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio. A 
slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity 
of the first power in comparison of the second. 

By that law of our nature which makes food necessary to 
the life of man, the effects of these two unequal powers 
must be kept equal. 

This implies a strong and constantly operating check on 
population from the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty 
must fall some where ; and must necessarily be severely felt 
by a large portion of mankind. 

Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, nature has 
scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and 
liberal hand. She has been comparatively sparing in the 
room, and the nourishment necessary to rear them. The 
germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with 
ample food, and ample room to expand it, would fill millions 
of worlds in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, 
that imperious, all-pervading law of nature, restrains them 
within the prescribed bounds. The race of plants, and the 
race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law. And 
the race of man cannot, by any efforts of reason, escape 
from it. Among plants and animals its effects are waste 



8 AN ESS A Y ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULA TION. 

of seed, sickness, and premature death. Among mankind, 
misery and vice. The former, misery, is an absolutely ne- 
cessary consequence of it. Vice is a highly probable conse- 
quence, and we therefore see it abundantly prevail ; but it 
ought not, perhaps, to be called an absolutely necessary 
consequence. The ordeal of virtue is to resist all tempta- 
tion to evil. 

This natural inequality of the two powers of population, 
and of production in the earth, and that great law of 
our nature which must constantly keep their effects equal, 
form the great difficulty that to me appears insurmountable 
in the way to perfectibility of society. All other arguments 
are of slight and subordinate consideration in comparison 
of this. I see no way by which man can escape from the 
weight of this law which pervades all animated nature. No 
fancied equality, no agrarian regulations in their utmost 
extent, could remove the pressure of it even for a single 
century. And it appears, therefore, to be decisive against 
the possible existence of a society, all the members of which 
should live in ease, happiness, and comparative leisure ; and 
feel no anxiety about providing the means of subsistence for 
themselves and families. 

Consequently, if the premises are just, the argument is 
conclusive against the perfectibility of the mass of mankind. 

I have thus sketched the general outline of the argument ; 
but I will examine it more particularly ; and I think it will 
be found that experience, the true source and foundation of 
all knowledge, invariably confirms its truth. 



CHAPTER II. 

The different ratios in which population and food ittcrease. — The 
necessary effects of these different ratios of ittcrease. — Oscillation 
produced by them in the condition of the lower classes of society. — 
Reasons why this oscillation has not been so much observed as might 
be expected. — Three propositions on which the general argument of 
the essay depends. — The different states in which mankind have been 
known to exist proposed to be exa??iined with reference to these three 
propositions. 

I said that population, when unchecked, increased in a 
geometrical ratio ; and subsistence for man in an arithmeti- 
cal ratio. 

Let us examine whether this proposition be just. 

I think it will be allowed, that no state has hitherto 
existed (at least that we have any account of) where the 
manners were so pure and simple, and the means of subsist- 
ence so abundant, that no check whatever has existed to 
early marriages ; among the lower classes, from a fear of 
not providing well for their families ; or among the higher 
classes, from a fear of lowering their condition in life. Con- 
sequently in no state that we have yet known, has the power 
of population been left to exert itself with perfect freedom. 

Whether the law of marriage be instituted or not, the dic- 
tate of nature and virtue, seems to be an early attachment to 
one woman. Supposing the liberty of changing in the case 

9 



10 AN ESSAY ON THE 

of an unfortunate choice, this liberty would not affect popu- 
lation till it arose to a height greatly vicious ; and we are 
now supposing the existence of a society where vice is 
scarcely known. 

In a state therefore of great equality and virtue, where 
pure and simple manners prevailed, and where the means 
of subsistence were so abundant, that no part of the society 
could have any fears about providing amply for a family, 
the power of population being left to exert itself unchecked, 
the increase of the human species would evidently be much 
greater than any increase that has been hitherto known. 

In the United States of America, where the means of sub- 
sistence have been more ample, the manners of the people 
more pure, and consequently the checks to early marriages 
fewer, than in any of the modern states of Europe, the pop- 
ulation has been found to double itself in twenty-five years. 

This ratio of increase, though short of the utmost power 
of population, yet as the result of actual experience, we 
will take as our rule ; and say, 

That population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself 
every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio. 

Let us now take any spot of earth, this Island for instance, 
and see in what ratio the subsistence it affords can be sup- 
posed to increase. We will begin with it under its present 
state of cultivation. 

If I allow that by the best possible policy, by breaking 
up more land, and by great encouragements to agricul- 
ture, the produce of this Island may be doubled in the first 
twenty-five years, I think it will be allowing as much as any 
person can well demand. 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULA TION. 11 

In the next twenty-five years, it is impossible to suppose 
that the produce could be quadrupled. It would be con- 
trary to all our knowledge of the qualities of land. The 
very utmost that we can conceive, is, that the increase in the 
second twenty-five years might equal the present produce. 
Let us then take this for our rule, though certainly far be- 
yond the truth ; and allow that by great exertion, the whole 
produce of the Island might be increased every twenty-five 
years, by a quantity of subsistence equal to what it at pres- 
ent produces. The most enthusiastic speculator cannot sup- 
pose a greater increase than this. In a few centuries it 
would make every acre of land in the Island like a garden. 

Yet this ratio of increase is evidently arithmetical. 

It may be fairly said, therefore, that the means of subsist- 
ence increase in an arithmetical ratio. 

Let us now bring the effects of these two ratios together. 

The population of the Island is computed to be about 
seven millions ; and we will suppose the present produce 
equal to the support of such a number. In the first twenty- 
five years the population would be fourteen millions ; and 
the food being also doubled, the means of subsistence would 
be equal to this increase. In the next twenty-five years the 
population would be twenty-eight millions ; and the means 
of subsistence only equal to the support of twenty-one mil- 
lions. In the next period, the population would be fifty- six 
millions, and the means of subsistence just sufficient for half 
that number. And at the conclusion of the first century, the 
population would be one hundred and twelve millions, and 
the means of subsistence only equal to the support of thirty- 
five millions ; which would leave a population of seventy- 
seven millions totally unprovided for. 



12 AN ESS A Y ON THE 

A great emigration necessarily implies unhappiness of 
some kind or other in the country that is deserted. For 
few persons will leave their families, connections, friends, 
and native land, to seek a settlement in untried foreign 
climes, without some strong subsisting causes of uneasiness 
where they are, or the hope of some great advantages in 
the place to which they are going. 

But to make the argument more general, and less inter- 
rupted by the partial views of emigration, let us take the 
whole earth, instead of one spot, and suppose that the re- 
straints to population were universally removed. If the sub- 
sistence for man that the earth affords was to be increased 
every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what the 
whole world at present produces, this would allow the power 
of production in the earth to be absolutely unlimited, and 
its ratio of increase much greater than we can conceive that 
any possible exertions of mankind could make it. 

Taking the population of the world at any number, a 
thousand millions, for instance, the human species would 
increase in the ratio of — i, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 
etc., and subsistence as — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc. In 
two centuries and a quarter the population would be to 
the means of subsistence as 512 to 10; in three centuries, 
as 4096 to 13 ; and in two thousand years the difference 
would be almost incalculable, though the produce in that 
time would have increased to an immense extent. 

No limits whatever are placed to the productions of the 
earth ; they may increase forever and be greater than any 
assignable quantity ; yet still the power of population being 
a power of superior order, the increase of the human species 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 13 

can only be kept commensurate to the increase of the means 
of subsistence, by the constant operation of the strong law 
of necessity acting as a check upon the greater power. 

The effects of this check remain now to be considered. 

Among plants and animals the view of the subject is 
simple. They are all impelled by a powerful instinct to the 
increase of their species ; and this instinct is interrupted by 
no reasoning, or doubts about providing for their offspring. 
Wherever therefore there is liberty, the power of increase 
is exerted ; and the superabundant effects are repressed 
afterwards by want of room and nourishment, which is com- 
mon to animals and plants ; and among animals, by becom- 
ing the prey of others. 

The effects of this check on man are more complicated. 

Impelled to the increase of his species by an equally 
powerful instinct, reason interrupts his career, and asks him 
whether he may not bring beings into the world, for whom 
he cannot provide the means of subsistence. In a state of 
equality, this would be the simple question. In the present 
state of society, other considerations occur. Will he not 
lower his rank in life? Will he not subject himself to 
greater difficulties than he at present feels? Will he not be 
obliged to labour harder? and if he has a large family, will 
his utmost exertions enable him to support them? May he 
not see his offspring in rags and misery, and clamouring for 
bread that he cannot give them ? And may he not be re- 
duced to the grating necessity of forfeiting his independ- 
ence, and of being obliged to the sparing hand of charity 
for support ? 

These considerations are calculated to prevent, and cer- 



14 AN ESSAY ON THE 

tainly do prevent, a very great number in all civilized nations 
from pursuing the dictate of nature in an early attachment 
to one woman. And this restraint almost necessarily, though 
not absolutely so, produces vice. Yet in all societies, even 
those that are most vicious, the tendency to a virtuous attach- 
ment is so strong, that there is a constant effort towards an 
increase of population. This constant effort as constantly 
tends to subject the lower classes of the society to .distress, 
and to prevent any great permanent amelioration of their 
condition. 

The way in which these effects are produced seems to be 
this. 

We will suppose the means of subsistence in any country 
just equal to the easy support of its inhabitants. The 
constant effort towards population, which is found to act 
even in the most vicious societies, increases the number 
of people before the means of subsistence are increased. 
The food therefore which before supported seven millions, 
must now be divided among seven millions and a half, or 
eight millions. The poor consequently must live much 
worse, and many of them be reduced to severe distress. 
The number of labourers also being above the proportion 
of the work in the market, the price of labour must tend 
toward a decrease ; while the price of provisions would at 
the same time tend to rise. The labourer therefore must 
work harder to earn the same as he did before. During 
this season of distress, the discouragements to marriage, and 
the difficulty of rearing a family are so great, that population 
is at a stand. In the meantime the cheapness of labour, 
the plenty of labourers, and the necessity of an increased 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 15 

industry amongst them, encourage cultivators to employ 
more labour upon their land ; to turn up fresh soil, and to 
manure and improve more completely what is already in 
tillage ; till ultimately the means of subsistence become in 
the same proportion to the population as at the period from 
which we set out. The situation of the labourer being then 
again tolerably comfortable, the restraints to population are 
in some degree loosened ; and the same retrograde and pro- 
gressive movements with respect to happiness are repeated. 

This sort of oscillation will not be remarked by superficial 
observers ; and it may be difficult even for the most pene- 
trating mind to calculate its periods. Yet that in all old 
states some such vibration does exist ; though from various 
transverse causes, in a much less marked, and in a much 
more irregular manner than I have described it, no reflect- 
ing man who considers the subject deeply can well doubt. 

Many reasons occur why this oscillation has been less 
obvious, and less decidedly confirmed by experience, than 
might naturally be expected. 

One principal reason is, that the histories of mankind that 
we possess are histories only of the higher classes. We have 
but few accounts that can be depended upon of the man- 
ners and customs of that part of mankind, where these retro- 
grade and progressive movements chiefly take place. A 
satisfactory history of this kind, of one people, and of one 
period, would require the constant and minute attention of 
an observing mind during a long life. Some of the objects 
of inquiry would be, in what proportion to the number of 
adults was the number of marriages : to what extent vicious 
customs prevailed in consequence of the restraints upon 



16 AN ESSAY ON THE 

matrimony : what was the comparative mortality among the 
children of the most distressed part of the community, and 
those who lived rather more at their ease : what were the 
variations in the real price of labour : and what were the 
observable differences in the state of the lower classes of 
society, with respect to ease and happiness, at different 
times during a certain period. 

Such a history would tend greatly to elucidate the manner 
in which the constant check upon population acts ; and 
would probably prove the existence of the retrograde and 
progressive movements that have been mentioned ; though 
the times of their vibration must necessarily be rendered 
irregular, from the operation of many interrupting causes ; 
such as, the introduction or failure of certain manufact- 
ures : a greater or less prevalent spirit of agricultural 
enterprise : years of plenty, or years of scarcity : wars and 
pestilence : poor laws : the invention of processes for shorten- 
ing labour without the proportional extension of the market 
for the commodity : and, particularly, the difference between 
the nominal and real price of labour ; a circumstance which 
has perhaps more than any other contributed to conceal this 
oscillation from common view. 

It very rarely happens that the nominal price of labour 
universally falls : but we well know that it frequently remains 
the same, while the nominal price of provisions has been 
gradually increasing. This is, in effect, a real fall in the price 
of labour ; and during this period, the condition of the lower 
orders of the community must gradually grow worse and 
worse. But the farmers and capitalists are growing rich 
from the real cheapness of labour. Their increased capitals 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 17 

enable them to employ a greater number of men. Work, 
therefore, may be plentiful ; and the price of labour would 
consequently rise. But the want of freedom in the market 
of labour, which occurs more or less ir9 all communities, 
either from parish laws, or the more general cause of the 
facility of combination among the rich, and its difficulty 
among the poor, operates to prevent the price of labour from 
rising at the natural period, and keeps it down some time 
longer ; perhaps till a year of scarcity, when the clamour is 
too loud, and the necessity too apparent to be resisted. 

The true cause of the advance in the price of labour is 
thus concealed ; and the rich affect to grant it as an act of 
compassion and favour to the poor, in consideration of a 
year of scarcity ; and when plenty returns, indulge themselves 
"in the most unreasonable of all complaints, that the price 
does not again fall ; when a little reflection would shew them 
that it must have risen long before, but from an unjust con- 
spiracy of their own. 

But though the rich by unfair combinations, contribute 
frequently to prolong a season of distress among the poor ; 
yet no possible form of society could prevent the almost 
constant action of misery upon a great part of mankind, if 
in a state of inequality, and upon all, if all were equal. 

The theory on which the truth of this position depends 
appears to me so extremely clear, that I feel at a loss to con- 
jecture what part of it can be denied. 

That population cannot increase without the means of 
subsistence, is a proposition so evident that it needs no illus- 
tration. 

That population does invariably increase where there are 
c 



18 AN ESS A Y ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULA TION 

the means of subsistence, the history of every people that 
have ever existed will abundantly prove. 

And, that the superior power of population cannot be 
checked without producing misery or vice, the ample portion 
of these two bitter ingredients in the cup of human life, and 
the continuance of the physical causes that seem to have 
produced them, bear too convincing a testimony. 

But in order more fully to ascertain the validity of these 
three propositions, let us examine the different states in 
which mankind have been known to exist. Even a cursory 
view will, I think, be sufficient to convince us that these 
propositions are incontrovertible truths. 



CHAPTER IV. 

. . . Sloiv increase of population at present in most of the states of 
Europe. — The tzvo principal checks to population. — The first or 
preventive check examined with regard to England. 

... In examining the principal states of modern Europe, 
we shall find, that though they have increased very consider- 
ably in population since they were nations of shepherds, yet 
that, at present, their progress is but slow ; and instead of doub- 
ling their numbers every twenty-five years, they require three 
or four hundred years, or more, for that purpose. Some, 
indeed, may be absolutely stationary, and others even retro- 
grade. The cause of this slow progress in population cannot 
be traced to a decay of the passion between the sexes. We 
have sufficient reason to think that this natural propensity 
exists still in undiminished vigour. Why then do not its 
effects appear in a rapid increase of the human species? 
An intimate view of the state of society in any one country 
in Europe, which may serve equally for all, will enable us to 
answer this question, and to say, that a foresight of the diffi- 
culties attending the rearing of a family, acts as a preventive 
check ; and the actual distress of some of the lower classes, 
by which they are disabled from giving the proper food and 
attention to their children, acts as a positive check, to the 
natural increase of population. 

19 



20 AN ESS A Y ON THE 

England, as one of the most flourishing states of Europe, 
may be fairly taken for an example, and the observations 
made, will apply with but little variation to any other country 
where the population increases slowly. 

The preventive check appears to operate in some degree 
through all the ranks of society in England. There are 
some men, even in the highest rank, who are prevented from 
marrying by the idea of the expences that they must retrench, 
and the fancied pleasures that they must deprive themselves 
of, on the supposition of having a family. These considera- 
tions are certainly trivial ; but a preventive foresight of this 
kind has objects of much greater weight for its contemplation 
as we go lower. 

A man of liberal education, but with an income only just 
sufficient to enable him to associate in the rank of gentle- 
men, must feel absolutely certain that if he marries, and has 
a family, he shall be obliged, if he mixes at all in society, to 
rank himself with moderate farmers, and the lower class of 
tradesmen. The woman that a man of education would 
naturally make the object of his choice, would be one 
brought up in the same tastes and sentiments with himself, 
and used to the familiar intercourse of a society totally dif- 
ferent from that to which she must be reduced by marriage. 
Can a man consent to place the object of his affection in a 
situation so discordant, probably, to her tastes and inclina- 
tions? Two or three steps of descent in society, particu- 
larly at this round of the ladder, where education ends and 
ignorance begins, will not be considered by the generality of 
people as a fancied and chimerical, but a real and essential 
evil. If society be held desirable, it surely must be free, 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 21 

equal, and reciprocal society, where benefits are conferred 
as well as received ; and not such as the dependent finds 
with his patron, or the poor with the rich. 

These considerations undoubtedly prevent a great number 
in this rank of life from following the bent of their inclina- 
tions in an early attachment. Others, guided either by a 
stronger passion, or a weaker judgment, break through these 
restraints ; and it would be hard indeed if the gratification 
of so delightful a passion as virtuous love, did not some- 
times more than counterbalance all its attendant evils. But 
I fear it must be owned, that the more general consequences 
of such marriages are rather calculated to justify, than to re- 
press, the forebodings of the prudent. 

The sons of tradesmen and farmers are exhorted not to 
marry, and generally find it necessary to pursue this advice, 
till they are settled in some business, or farm, that may en- 
able them to support a family. These events may not, per- 
haps, occur till they are far advanced in life. The scarcity 
of farms is a very general complaint in England. And the 
competition in every kind of business is so great, that it is 
not possible that all should be successful. 

The labourer who earns eighteen pence a day, and lives 
with some degree of comfort as a single man, will hesitate a 
little before he divides that pittance among four or five, 
which seems to be but just sufficient for one. Harder fare 
and harder labour he would submit to, for the sake of living 
with the woman that he loves ; but he must feel conscious, 
if he thinks at all, that, should he have a large family, and 
any ill luck whatever, no degree of frugality, no possible ex- 
ertion of his manual strength, could preserve him from the 



22 AN ESSAY ON THE 

heart-rending sensation of seeing his children starve, or of 
forfeiting his independence, and being obliged to the parish 
for their support. The love of independence is a sentiment 
that surely none would wish to be erased from the breast of 
man : though the parish law of England, it must be con- 
fessed, is a system of all others the most calculated gradually 
to weaken this sentiment, and in the end, may eradicate it 
completely. 

The servants who live in gentlemen's families, have re- 
straints that are yet stronger to break through, in venturing 
upon marriage. They possess the necessaries, and even the 
comforts of life, almost in as great plenty as their masters. 
Their work is easy, and their food luxurious, compared with 
the class of labourers. And their sense of dependence is 
weakened by the conscious power of changing their masters, 
if they feel themselves offended. Thus comfortably situated 
at present, what are their prospects in marrying. Without 
knowledge or capital, either for business, or farming, and 
unused, and therefore unable to earn a subsistence by daily 
labour, their only refuge seems to be a miserable alehouse, 
which certainly offers no very enchanting prospect of a 
happy evening to their lives. By much the greater part, 
therefore, deterred by this uninviting view of their future 
situation, content themselves with remaining single where 
they are. 

If this sketch of the state of society in England be near the 
truth, and I do not conceive that it is exaggerated, it will be 
allowed, that the preventive check to population in this 
country operates, though with varied force, through all the 
classes of the community. The same observation will hold 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 23 

true with regard to all old states. The effects, indeed, of 
these restraints upon marriage are but too conspicuous in 
the consequent vices that are produced in almost every part 
of the world ; vices that are continually involving both sexes 
in inextricable unhappiness. 



CHAPTER V. 

The second, or positive check to population examined, in England. — 
The true cause why the immense sum collected in England for the 
poor does not better their condition. — 7 'he powerful tendency of the 
poor laws to defeat their own purpose. — Palliative of the distress of 
the poor proposed. — 1 "he absolute impossibility from the fixed laws of 
our nature, that the pressure of want can ever be completely re- 
moved from the lower classes of society. — All the checks to population 
may be resolved into i7iisery or vice. 

The positive check to population, by which I mean, the 
check which represses an increase which is already begun, is 
confined chiefly, though not perhaps solely, to the lowest 
orders of society. This check is not so obvious to common 
view as the other I have mentioned ; and, to prove distinctly 
the force and extent of its operation, would require, perhaps, 
more data than we are in possession of. But I believe it 
has been very generally remarked by those who have at- 
tended to bills of mortality, that of the number of children 
who die annually, much too great a proportion belongs to 
those, who may be supposed unable to give their offspring 
proper food and attention ; exposed as they are occasionally 
to severe distress, and confined, perhaps, to unwholesome 
habitations and hard labour. This mortality among the 
children of the poor has been constantly taken notice of in 
ail towns. It certainly does not prevail in an equal degree 

24 



AN ESSA Y ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULA TION 25 

in the country ; but the subject has not hitherto received 
sufficient attention to enable any one to say, that there are 
not more deaths in proportion, among the children of the 
poor, even in the country, than among those of the middling 
and higher classes. Indeed it seems difficult to suppose 
that a labourer's wife, who has six children, and who is 
sometimes in absolute want of bread, should be able always 
to give them the food and attention necessary to support 
life. The sons and daughters of peasants will not be found 
such rosy cherubs in real life, as they are described to be in 
romances. It cannot fail to be remarked by those who live 
much in the country, that the sons of labourers are very apt 
to be stunted in their growth, and are a long while arriving 
at maturity. Boys that you would guess to be fourteen or 
fifteen, are upon inquiry, frequently found to be eighteen or 
nineteen. And the lads who drive ploughs, which must cer- 
tainly be a healthy exercise, are very rarely seen with any 
appearance of calves to their legs ; a circumstance which 
can only be attributed to a want of proper, or of sufficient 
nourishment. 

To remedy the frequent distress of the common people, 
the poor laws of England have been instituted ; but it is to 
be feared, that though they may have alleviated a little the 
intensity of individual misfortune, they have spread the gen- 
eral evil over a much larger surface. It is a subject often 
started in conversation, and mentioned always as a matter of 
great surprise, that notwithstanding the immense sum that is 
annually collected for the poor in England, there is still so 
much distress among them. Some think that the money 
must be embezzled ; others that the churchwardens and 



26 AN ESSA Y ON THE 

overseers consume the greater part of it in dinners. All 
agree that some how or other it must be very ill-managed. 
In short the fact, that nearly three millions are collected 
annually for the poor, and yet that their distresses are not 
removed, is the subject of continual astonishment. But a 
man who sees a little below the surface of things would be 
very much more astonished, if the fact were otherwise than 
it is observed to be, or even if a collection universally of 
eighteen shillings in the pound instead of four, were materi- 
ally to alter it. I will state a case which I hope will eluci- 
date my meaning. 

Suppose, that by a subscription of the rich, the eighteen 
pence a day which men earn now, was made up five shil- 
lings, it might be imagined, perhaps, that they would then 
be able to live comfortably, and have a piece of meat every 
day for their dinners. But this would be a very false con- 
clusion. The transfer of three shillings and sixpence a day 
to every labourer, would not increase the quantity of meat 
in the country. There is not at present enough for all to 
have a decent share. What would then be the consequence ? 
The competition among the buyers in the market of meat, 
would rapidly raise the price from six pence or seven pence, 
to two or three shillings in the pound ; and the commodity 
would not be divided among many more than it is at pres- 
ent. When an article is scarce, and cannot be distributed 
to all, he that can shew the most valid patent, that is, he that 
offers most money becomes the possessor. If we can sup- 
pose the competition among the buyers of meat to continue 
long enough for a greater number of cattle to be reared 
annually, this could only be done at the expence of the corn, 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 27 

which would be a very disadvantageous exchange ; for it is 
well known that the country could not then support the same 
population ; and when subsistence is scarce in proportion to 
the number of people, it is of little consequence whether the 
lowest members of the society possess eighteen pence or five 
shillings. They must at all events be reduced to live upon 
the hardest fare, and in the smallest quantity. 

It will be said, perhaps, that the increased number of 
purchasers in every article would give a spur to productive 
industry, and that the whole produce of the island would be 
increased. This might in some degree be the case. But 
the spur that these fancied riches would give to population, 
would more than counterbalance it, and the increased pro- 
duce would be to be divided among a more than propor- 
tionably increased number of people. All this time I am 
supposing that the same quantity of work would be done as 
before. But this would not really take place. The receipt 
of five shillings a day, instead of eighteen pence, would 
make every man fancy himself comparatively rich, and able 
to indulge himself in many hours or days of leisure. This 
would give a strong and immediate check to productive 
industry ; and in a short time, not only the nation would 
be poorer, but the lower classes themselves would be much 
more distressed than when they received only eighteen 
pence a day. 

A collection from the rich of eighteen shillings in the 
pound, even if distributed in the most judicious manner, 
would have a little the same effect as that resulting from the 
supposition I have just made; and no possible contribu- 
tions or sacrifices of the rich, particularly in money, could 



28 AN ESS A Y ON THE 

for any time prevent the recurrence of distress among the 
lower members of society, whoever they were. Great 
changes might, indeed, be made. The rich might be- 
come poor, and some of the poor rich : but a part of 
the society must necessarily feel a difficulty of living ; and 
this difficulty will naturally fall on the least fortunate 
members. 

It may at first appear strange, but I believe it is true, that 
I cannot by means of money raise a poor man, and enable 
him to live much better than he did before, without propor- 
tionably depressing others in the same class. If I retrench 
the quantity of food consumed in my house, and give him 
what I have cut off, I then benefit him, without depressing 
any but myself and family, who, perhaps, may be well able 
to bear it. If I turn up a piece of uncultivated land, and 
then give him the produce, I then benefit both him, and all 
the members of the society, because what he before con- 
sumed is thrown into the common stock, and probably some 
of the new produce with it. But if I only give him money, 
supposing the produce of the country to remain the same, 
I give him a title to a larger share of that produce than 
formerly, which share he cannot receive without diminishing 
the shares of others. It is evident that this effect, in indi- 
vidual instances, must be so small as to be totally impercep- 
tible ; but still it must exist, as many other effects do, which 
like some of the insects which people the air, elude our 
grosser perceptions. 

Supposing the quantity of food in any country to remain 
the same for many years together ; it is evident that this 
food must be divided according to the value of each man's 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 29 

patent,* or the sum of money that he can afford to spend in 
this commodity so universally in request. It is a demon- 
strative truth therefore, that the patents of one set of men 
could not be increased in value, without diminishing the 
value of the patents of some other set of men. If the rich 
were to subscribe, and give five shillings a day to five hun- 
dred thousand men without retrenching their own tables, no 
doubt can exist, that as these men would naturally live more 
at their ease, and consume a greater quantity of provisions, 
there would be less food remaining to divide among the 
rest ; and consequently each man's patent would be dimin- 
ished in value, or the same number of pieces of silver would 
purchase a smaller quantity of subsistence. 

An increase of population without a proportionate increase 
of food, will evidently have the same effect in lowering the 
value of each man's patent. The food must necessarily be 
distributed in smaller quantities, and consequently a day's 
labour will purchase a smaller quantity of provisions. An 
increase in the price of provisions would arise, either from 
an increase of population faster than the means of subsist- 
ence ; or from a different distribution of the money of the 
society. The food of a country that has been long occu- 
pied, if it be increasing, increases slowly and regularly, and 
cannot be made to answer any sudden demands ; but varia- 
tions in the distribution of the money of a society are not 
unfrequently occurring, and are undoubtedly among the 



* Mr. Godwin calls the wealth that a man received from his ancestors 
a mouldy patent. It may, I think, very properly be termed a patent; but 
I hardly see the propriety of calling it a mouldy one, as it is an article in 
such constant use. 



30 AN ESSAY ON THE 

causes that occasion the continual variations which we ob- 
serve in the price of provisions. 

The poor-laws of England tend to depress the general 
condition of the poor in these two ways. Their first obvi- 
ous tendency is to increase population without increasing 
the food for its support. A poor man may marry with little 
or no prospect of being able to support a family in inde- 
pendence. They may be said therefore in some measure 
to create the poor which they maintain ; and as the pro- 
visions of the country must, in consequence of the increased 
population, be distributed to every man in smaller propor- 
tions, it is evident that the labour of those who are not sup- 
ported by parish assistance, will purchase a smaller quantity 
of provisions than before, and consequently, more of them 
must be driven to ask for support. 

Secondly, the quantity of provisions consumed in work- 
houses upon a part of the society, that cannot be consid- 
ered in general as the most valuable part, diminishes the 
shares that would otherwise belong to more industrious, and 
more worthy members ; and thus in the same manner forces 
more to become dependent. If the poor in the workhouses 
were to live better than they now do, this new distribution 
of the money of the society would tend more conspicu- 
ously to depress the condition of those out of the work- 
houses, by occasioning a rise in the price of provisions. 

Fortunately for England, a spirit of independence still 
remains among the peasantry. The poor-laws are strongly 
calculated to eradicate this spirit. They have succeeded in 
part ; but had they succeeded as completely as might have 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 31 

been expected, their pernicious tendency would not have 
been so long concealed. 

Hard as it may appear in individual instances, dependent 
poverty ought to be held disgraceful. Such a stimulus 
seems to be absolutely necessary to promote the happiness 
of the great mass of mankind; and every general attempt 
to weaken this stimulus, however benevolent its apparent 
intention, will always defeat its own purpose. If men are 
induced to marry from a prospect of parish provision, with 
little or no chance of maintaining their families in indepen- 
dence, they are not only unjustly tempted to bring unhappi- 
ness and dependence upon themselves and children ; but 
they are tempted, without knowing it, to injure all in the 
same class with themselves. A labourer who marries with- 
out being able to support a family, may in some respects 
be considered as an enemy to all his fellow-labourers. 

I feel no doubt whatever, that the parish laws of England 
have contributed to raise the price of provisions, and to 
lower the real price of labour. They have therefore con- 
tributed to impoverish that class of people whose only pos- 
session is their labour. It is also difficult to suppose that 
they have not powerfully contributed to generate that care- 
lessness, and want of frugality observable among the poor, 
so contrary to the disposition frequently to be remarked 
among petty tradesmen and small farmers. The labouring 
poor, to use a vulgar expression, seem always to live from 
hand to mouth. Their present wants employ their whole 
attention, and they seldom think of the future. Even when 
they have an opportunity of saving they seldom exercise it ; 
but all that is beyond their present necessities goes, gener- 



32 AN ESSA Y ON THE 

ally speaking, to the ale-house. The poor-laws of England 
may therefore be said to diminish both the power and the 
will to save, among the common people, and thus to weaken 
one of the strongest incentives to sobriety and industry, and 
consequently to happiness. 

It is a general complaint among master manufacturers, 
that high wages .ruin all their workmen ; but it is difficult 
to conceive that these men would not save a part of their 
high wages for the future support of their families, instead 
of spending it in drunkenness and dissipation, if they did 
not rely on parish assistance for support in case of accidents. 
And that the poor employed in manufactures consider this 
assistance as a reason why they may spend all the wages 
they earn, and enjoy themselves while they can, appears to 
be evident from the number of families that, upon the fail- 
ure of any great manufactory, immediately fall upon the 
parish ; when perhaps the wages earned in this manufac- 
tory, while it flourished, were sufficiently above the price 
of common country labour, to have allowed them to save 
enough for their support, till they could find some other 
channel for their industry. 

A man who might not be deterred from going to the ale- 
house, from the consideration that on his death or sickness 
he should leave his wife and family upon the parish, might 
yet hesitate in thus dissipating his earnings, if he were as- 
sured that, in either of these cases, his family must starve, 
or be left to the support of casual bounty. In China, where 
the real as well as nominal price of labour is very low, sons 
are yet obliged by law to support their aged and helpless 
parents. Whether such a law would be advisable in this 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 33 

country, I will not pretend to determine. But it seems 
at any rate highly improper, by positive institutions, which 
render dependent poverty so general, to weaken that dis- 
grace, which for the best and most humane reasons ought 
to attach to it. 

The mass of happiness among the common people can- 
not but be diminished, when one of the strongest checks to 
idleness and dissipation is thus removed ; and when men are 
thus allured to marry with little or no prospect of being 
able to maintain a family in independence. Every obstacle 
in the way of marriage must undoubtedly be considered as 
a species of unhappiness. But as from the laws of our nature 
some check to population must exist, it is better that it 
should be checked from a foresight of the difficulties attend- 
ing a family, and the fear of dependent poverty, than that 
it should be encouraged, only to be repressed afterwards by 
want and sickness. 

It should be remembered always, that there is an essen- 
tial difference between food and those wrought commodities, 
the raw materials of which are in great plenty. A demand 
for these last will not fail to create them in as great quan- 
tity as they are wanted. The demand for food has by no 
means the same creative power. In a country where all the 
fertile spots have been seized, high offers are necessary to 
encourage the farmer to lay his dressing on land, from which 
he cannot expect a profitable return for some years. And 
before the prospect of advantage is sufficiently great to 
encourage this sort of agricultural enterprise, and while the 
new produce is rising, great distresses may be suffered from 
the want of it. The demand for an increased quantity of 



34 AN ESSAY ON THE 

subsistence is, with few exceptions, constant everywhere, yet 
we see how slowly it is answered in all those countries that 
have been long occupied. 

The poor-laws of England were undoubtedly instituted 
for the most benevolent purpose ; but there is great reason 
to think that they have not succeeded in their intention. 
They certainly mitigate some cases of very severe distress 
which might otherwise occur ; yet the state of the poor who 
are supported by parishes, considered in all its circum- 
stances, is very far from being free from misery. But one 
of the principal objections to them is, that for this assist- 
ance which some of the poor receive, in itself almost a 
doubtful blessing, the whole class of the common people of 
England is subject to a set of grating, inconvenient, and 
tyrannical laws, totally inconsistent with the genuine spirit 
of the constitution. The whole business of settlements, even 
in its present amended state, is utterly contrary to all ideas 
of freedom. The parish persecution of men whose fami- 
lies are likely to become chargeable, and of poor women 
who are near lying-in, is a most disgraceful and disgusting 
tyranny. And the obstructions continually occasioned in the 
market of labour by these laws, have a constant tendency to 
add to the difficulties of those who are struggling to support 
themselves without assistance. 

These evils attendant on the poor-laws are in some degree 
irremediable. If assistance be to be distributed to a certain 
class of people, a power must be given somewhere of dis- 
criminating the proper objects, and of managing the con- 
cerns of the institutions that are necessary ; but any great 
interference" with the concerns of other people, is a species 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 35 

of tyranny ; and in the common course of things, the exer- 
cise of this power may be expected to become grating to 
those who are driven to ask for support. The tyranny of 
Justices, Churchwardens, and Overseers, is a common com- 
plaint among the poor : but the fault does not lie so much 
in these persons, who probably before they were in power 
were not worse than other people ; but in the nature of all 
such institutions. 

The evil is perhaps gone too far to be remedied ; but I 
feel little doubt in my own mind, that if the poor-laws had 
never existed, though there might have been a few more in- 
stances of very severe distress, yet that the aggregate mass 
of happiness among the common people would have been 
much greater than it is at present. 

Mr. Pitt's Poor-bill has the appearance of being framed 
with benevolent intentions, and the clamour raised against 
it was in many respects ill directed, and unreasonable. But 
it must be confessed that it possesses in a high degree the 
great and radical defect of all systems of the kind, that, of 
tending to increase population without increasing the means 
for its support, and thus to depress the condition of those 
that are not supported by parishes, and, consequently, to 
create more poor. 

To remove the wants of the lower classes of society, is 
indeed an arduous task. The truth is, that the pressure of 
distress on this part of a community is an evil so deeply 
seated, that no human ingenuity can reach it. Were I to 
propose a palliative ; and palliatives are all that the nature 
of the case will admit ; it should be, in the first place, the 
total abolition of all the present parish-laws. This would at 



36 AN ESSAY ON THE 

any rate give liberty and freedom of action to the peasantry 
of England, which they can hardly be said to possess at 
present. They would then be able to settle without inter- 
ruption, wherever there was a prospect of a greater plenty 
of work, and a higher price for labour. The market of 
labour would then be free, and those obstacles removed, 
which as things are now, often for a considerable time pre- 
vent the price from rising according to the demand. 

Secondly, Premiums might be given for turning up fresh 
land, and all possible encouragements held out to agri- 
culture above manufactures, and to tillage above grazing. 
Every endeavour should be used to weaken and destroy all 
those institutions relating to corporations, apprenticeships, 
etc., which cause the labours of agriculture to be worse paid 
than the labours of trade and manufactures. For a country 
can never produce its proper quantity of food while these 
distinctions remain in favour of artizans. Such encourage- 
ments to agriculture would tend to furnish the market with 
an increasing quantity of healthy work, and at the same 
time, by augmenting the produce of the country, would 
raise the comparative price of labour, and ameliorate the 
condition of the labourer. Being now in better circum- 
stances, and seeing no prospect of parish assistance, he 
would be more able, as well as more inclined, to enter into 
associations for providing against the sickness of himself or 
family. 

Lastly, for cases of extreme distress, county workhouses 
might be established, supported by rates upon the whole 
kingdom, and free for persons of all counties, and indeed of 
all nations. The fare should be hard, and those that were 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 37 

able obliged to work. It would be desirable, that they 
should not be considered as comfortable asylums in all diffi- 
culties ; but merely places where severe distress might find 
some alleviation. A part of these houses might be sepa- 
rated, or others built for a more beneficial purpose, which 
has not been unfrequently taken notice of, that of providing 
a place, where any person, whether native or foreign, might 
do a day's work at all times, and receive the market price 
for it. Many cases would undoubtedly be left for the exer- 
tion of individual benevolence. 

A plan of this kind, the preliminary of which, should be 
an abolition of all the present parish-laws, seems to be the 
best calculated to increase the mass of happiness among the 
common people of England. To prevent the recurrence of 
misery, is, alas ! beyond the power of man. In the vain en- 
deavour to obtain what in the nature of things is impossible, 
we now sacrifice not only possible but certain benefits. We 
tell the common people, that if they will submit to a code of 
tyrannical regulations, they shall never be in want. They 
do submit to these regulations. They perform their part of 
the contract : but we do not, nay cannot, perform ours : and 
thus the poor sacrifice the valuable blessing of liberty, and 
receive nothing that can be called an equivalent in return. 

Notwithstanding then, the institution of the poor-laws in 
England, I think it will be allowed, that considering the 
state of the lower classes altogether, both in the towns and 
in the country, the distresses which they suffer from the 
want of proper and sufficient food, from hard labour and un- 
wholesome habitations, must operate as a constant check to 
incipient population. 



38 AN ESS A Y ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POP VIA TIGN 

To these two great checks to population, in all long occu- 
pied countries, which I have called the preventive and the 
positive checks, may be added vicious customs with respect 
to women, great cities, unwholesome manufactures, luxury, 
pestilence, and war. 

All these checks may be fairly resolved into misery and 
vice. 

And that these are the true causes of the slow increase of 
population in all the states of modern Europe, will appear 
sufficiently evident from the comparatively rapid increase 
that has invariably taken place, whenever these causes have 
been in any considerable degree removed. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Best criterion of a permanent increase of population. — Great 
frugality of living one of the causes of the famines of China and 
Jndostan. — Evil tendency of one of the clauses of Mr. Pitt's Poor 
Bill. — Only one proper way of encouraging population. — Causes 
of the happiness of nations. — Famine, the last and most dreadful 
mode by zvhich nature represses a redundant population. — The 
three propositions considered as established. 

. . . The passion between the sexes has appeared in 
every age to be so nearly the same, that it may always be con- 
sidered, in algebraic language, as a given quantity. The great 
law of necessity which prevents population from increasing in 
any country beyond the food which it can either produce 
or acquire, is a law, so open to our view, so obvious and 
evident to our understandings, and so completely confirmed 
by the experience of every age, that we cannot for a moment 
doubt it. The different modes which nature takes to pre- 
vent, or repress a redundant population, do not appear, 
indeed, to us so certain and regular ; but though we cannot 
always predict the mode, we may with certainty predict the 
fact. If the proportion of births to deaths for a few years, 
indicate an increase of numbers much beyond the propor- 
tional increased or acquired produce of the country, we may 
be perfectly certain, that unless #n emigration takes place, 

39 



40 AN ESSAY ON THE 

the deaths will shortly exceed the births ; and that the 
increase that had taken place for a few years cannot be the 
real average increase of the population of the country. 
Were there no other depopulating causes, every country 
would, without doubt, be subject to periodical pestilences 
or famines. 

The only true criterion of a real and permanent increase 
in the population of any country, is the increase of the 
means of subsistence. But even this criterion is subject to 
some slight variations, which are, however, completely open 
to our view and observations. In some countries popu- 
lation seems to have been forced ; that is, the people have 
been habituated by degrees to live almost upon the smallest 
possible quantity of food. There must have been periods 
in such countries, when population increased permanently, 
without an increase in the means of subsistence. China 
seems to answer to this description. If the accounts we 
have of it are to be trusted, the lower classes of people are 
in the habit of living almost upon the smallest possible 
quantity of food, and are glad to get any putrid offals that 
European labourers would rather starve than eat. The law 
in China which permits parents to expose their children, 
has tended principally thus to force the population. A 
nation in this state must necessarily be subject to famines. 
Where a country is so populous in proportion to the means 
of subsistence, that the average produce of it is but barely 
sufficient to support the lives of the inhabitants, any defi- 
ciency from the badness of seasons must be fatal. It is 
probable that the very frugal manner in which the Gentoos 
are in the habit of living contributes in some degree to the 
famines of Indostan. 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 41 

In America, where the reward of labour is at present so 
liberal, the lower classes might retrench very considerably 
in a year of scarcity, without materially distressing them- 
selves. A famine therefore seems to be almost impossible. 
It may be expected, that in the progress of the population 
of America, the labourers will in time be much less liberally 
rewarded. The numbers will in this case permanently 
increase, without a proportional increase in the means of 
subsistence. 

In the different States of Europe there must be some 
variations in the proportion between the number of inhabi- 
tants, and the quantity of food consumed, arising from the 
different habits of living that prevail in each State. The 
labourers of the South of England are so accustomed to eat 
fine wheaten bread, that they will suffer themselves to be 
half starved, before they will submit to live like the Scotch 
peasants. They might perhaps in time, by the constant 
operation of the hard law of necessity, be reduced to live 
even like the lower Chinese : and the country would then, 
with the same quantity of food, support a greater population. 
But to effect this must always be a most difficult, and every 
friend to humanity will hope, an abortive attempt. Nothing 
is so common as to hear of encouragements that ought to 
be given to population. If the tendency of mankind to 
increase be so great as I have represented it to be, it may 
seem strange that this increase does not come when it is 
thus repeatedly called for. The true reason is, that the 
demand for a greater population is made without preparing 
the funds necessary to support it. Increase the demand for 
agricultural labour by promoting cultivation, and with it 



42 AN ESSA Y ON THE 

consequently increase the produce of the country, and 
ameliorate the condition of the labourer, and no apprehen- 
sions whatever need be entertained of the proportional in- 
crease of population. An attempt to effect this purpose in 
any other way is vicious, cruel, and tyrannical, and in any 
state of tolerable freedom cannot therefore succeed. It may 
appear to be the interest of the rulers, and the rich of a 
State, to force population, and thereby lower the price of 
labour, and consequently the expence of fleets and armies, 
and the cost of manufactures for foreign sale : but every 
attempt of the kind should be carefully watched, and 
strenuously resisted by the friends of the poor, particularly 
when it comes under the deceitful garb of benevolence, and 
is likely, on that account, to be cheerfully and cordially 
received by the common people. 

I entirely acquit Mr. Pitt of any sinister intention in that 
clause of his poor bill which allows a shilling a week to 
every labourer for each child he has above three. I confess, 
that before the bill was brought into Parliament, and for 
some time after, I thought that such a regulation would 
be highly beneficial ; but further reflection on the subject 
has convinced me, that if its object be to better the condi- 
tion of the poor, it is calculated to defeat the very purpose 
which it has in view. It has no tendency that I can dis- 
cover to increase the produce of the country ; and if it tend 
to increase population, without increasing the produce, the 
necessary and inevitable consequence appears to be, that 
the same produce must be divided among a greater number, 
and consequently that a day's labour will purchase a smaller 
quantity of provisions, and the poor therefore in general 
must be more distressed. 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 43 

I have mentioned some cases, where population may per- 
manently increase, without a proportional increase in the 
means of subsistence. But it is evident that the variation in 
different States, between the food and the numbers supported 
by it, is restricted to a limit beyond which it cannot pass. 
In every country, the population of which is not absolutely 
decreasing, the food must be necessarily sufficient to sup- 
port, and to continue, the race of labourers. 

Other circumstances being the same, it may be affirmed, 
that countries are populous, according to the quantity of 
human food which they produce ; and happy, according to 
the liberality with which that food is divided, or the quantity 
which a day's labour will purchase. Corn countries are 
more populous than pasture countries ; and rice countries 
more populous than corn countries. The lands in England 
are not suited to rice, but they would all bear potatoes : and 
Dr. Adam Smith observes, that if potatoes were to become 
the favourite vegetable food of the common people, and if 
the same quantity of land was employed in their culture as 
is now employed in the culture of corn, the country would 
be able to support a much greater population ; and would 
consequently in a very short time have it. 

The happiness of a country does not depend, absolutely, 
upon its poverty or its riches, upon its youth or its age, upon 
its being thinly or fully inhabited, but upon the rapidity with 
which it is increasing, upon the degree in which the yearly 
increase of food approaches to the yearly increase of an 
unrestricted population. This approximation is always the 
nearest in new colonies, where the knowledge and industry 
of an old State, operate on the fertile unappropriated land 



44 AN ESSAY ON THE 

of the new one. In other cases, the youth or age of a State 
is not in this respect of very great importance. It is pro- 
bable, that the food of Great Britain is divided in as great 
plenty to the inhabitants, at the present period, as it was 
two thousand, three thousand, or four thousand years ago. 
And there is reason to believe that the poor and thinly in- 
habited tracts of the Scotch Highlands, are as much dis- 
tressed by an overcharged population, as the rich and 
populous province of Flanders. 

Were a country never to be over-run by a people more 
advanced in arts, but left to its own natural progress in 
civilization ; from the time that its produce might be con- 
sidered as an unit, to the time that it might be considered as 
a million, during the lapse of many hundred years, there 
would not be a single period, when the mass of the people 
could be said to be free from distress, either directly or 
indirectly, for want of food. In every State in Europe, since 
we have first had accounts of it, millions and millions of 
human existences have been repressed from this simple 
cause ; though perhaps in some of these States, an absolute 
famine has never been known. 

Famine seems to be the last, the most dreadful resource 
of nature. The power of population is so superior to the 
power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that 
premature death must in some shape or other visit the 
human race. The vices of mankind are active and able 
ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the 
great army of destruction ; and often finish the dreadful work 
themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermina- 
tion, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague, ad- 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 45 

vance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and 
ten thousands. Should success be still incomplete ; gigantic 
inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty 
blow, levels the population with the food of the world. 

Must it not then be acknowledged by an attentive ex- 
aminer of the histories of mankind, that in every age and in 
every State in which man has existed, or does now exist, 

That the increase of population is necessarily limited by 
the means of subsistence. 

That population does invariably increase when the means 
of subsistence increase. And, 

That the superior power of population is repressed, and 
the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence 
by misery and vice. 



CHAPTER X. 

Mr. Godwin's system of equality. — Error of attributing all the vices of 
mankind to human institutions. — Mr. Godwin 's first answer to the 
difficulty arising from population totally insufficient. — Mr. God- 
win's beautiful system of equality supposed to be realized. — Its utter 
destruction simply frot?i the principle of population in so short a 
time as thirty years. 

In reading Mr. Godwin's ingenious and able work on 
political justice, it is impossible not to be struck with the 
spirit and energy of his style, the force and precision of 
some of his reasonings, the ardent tone of his thoughts, and 
particularly with that impressive earnestness of manner 
which gives an air of truth to the whole. At the same time, 
it must be confessed, that he has not proceeded in his en- 
quiries with the caution that sound philosophy seems to 
require. His conclusions are often unwarranted by his 
premises. He fails sometimes in removing the objections 
which he himself brings forward. He relies too much on 
general and abstract propositions which will not admit of 
application. And his conjectures certainly far outstrip the 
modesty of nature. 

The system of equality which Mr. Godwin proposes is, 
without doubt, by far the most beautiful and engaging of 
any that has yet appeared. An amelioration of society to 
be produced merely by reason and conviction, wears much 

46 



AN ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION 47 

more the promise of permanence, than any change effected 
and maintained by force. The unlimited exercise of pri- 
vate judgment, is a doctrine inexpressibly grand and capti- 
vating, and has a vast superiority over those systems where 
every individual is in a manner the slave of the public. 
The substitution of benevolence as the master-spring, and 
moving principle of society, instead of self-love, is a con- 
summation devoutly to be wished. In short, it is impos- 
sible to contemplate the whole of this fair structure, without 
emotions of delight and admiration, accompanied with ar- 
dent longing for the period of its accomplishment. But, 
alas ! that moment can never arrive. The whole is little 
better than a dream, a beautiful phantom of the imagina- 
tion. These " gorgeous palaces " of happiness and immor- 
tality, these " solemn temples " of truth and virtue will 
dissolve, " like the baseless fabric of a vision," when we 
awaken to real life, and contemplate the true and genuine 
situation of man on earth. 

Mr. Godwin, at the conclusion of the third chapter of his 
eighth book, speaking of population, says, " There is a prin- 
ciple in human society, by which population is perpetually 
kept down to the level of the means of subsistence. Thus 
among the wandering tribes of America and Asia, we never 
find through the lapse of ages that population has so in- 
creased as to render necessary the cultivation of the earth." 
This principle, which Mr. Godwin thus mentions as some 
mysterious and occult cause, and which he does not attempt 
to investigate, will be found to be the grinding law of neces- 
sity ; misery, and the fear of misery. 

The great error under which Mr. Godwin labours through- 



48 AN ESSA Y ON THE 

out his whole work, is, the attributing almost all the vices 
and misery that are seen in civil society to human institu- 
tions. Political regulations, and the established administra- 
tion of property, are with him the fruitful sources of all evil, 
the hotbeds of all the crimes that degrade mankind. Were 
this really a true state of the case, it would not seem a hope- 
less task to remove evil completely from the world ; and 
reason seems to be the proper and adequate instrument for 
effecting so great a purpose. But the truth is, that though 
human institutions appear to be the obvious and obtrusive 
causes of much mischief to mankind ; yet, in reality, they 
are light and superficial, they are mere feathers that float 
on the surface, in comparison with those deeper seated 
causes of impurity that corrupt the springs, and render tur- 
bid the whole stream of human life. 

Mr. Godwin, in his chapter on the benefits attendant on 
a system of equality, says, "The spirit of oppression, the 
spirit of servility, and the spirit of fraud, these are the im- 
mediate growth of the established administration of prop- 
erty. They are alike hostile to intellectual improvement. 
The other vices of envy, malice, and revenge, are their 
inseparable companions. In a state of society, where men 
lived in the midst of plenty, and where all shared alike the 
bounties of nature, these sentiments would inevitably expire. 
The narrow principle of selfishness would vanish. No man 
being obliged to guard his little store, or provide with anx- 
iety and pain for his restless wants, each would lose his 
individual existence in the thought of the general good. 
No man would be an enemy to his neighbour, for they 
would have no subject of contention ; and, of consequence, 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 49 

philanthropy would resume the empire which reason assigns 
her. Mind would be delivered from her perpetual anxiety 
about corporal support, and free to expatiate in the field of 
thought, which is congenial to her. Each would assist the 
enquiries of all." 

This would, indeed, be a happy state. But that it is 
merely an imaginary picture, with scarcely a feature near the 
truth, the reader, I am afraid, is already too well convinced. 

Man cannot live in the midst of plenty. All cannot share 
alike the bounties of nature. Were there no established 
administration of property, every man would be obliged to 
guard with force his little store. Selfishness would be trium- 
phant. The subjects of contention would be perpetual. 
Every individual mind would be under a constant anxiety 
about corporal support ; and not a single intellect would be 
left free to expatiate in the field of thought. 

How little Mr. Godwin has turned the attention of his 
penetrating mind to the real state of man on earth, will suffi- 
ciently appear from the manner in which he endeavours to 
remove the difficulty of an overcharged population. He 
says, " The obvious answer to this objection, is, that to 
reason thus is to foresee difficulties at a great distance. 
Three-fourths of the habitable globe is now uncultivated. 
The parts already cultivated are capable of immeasurable 
improvement. Myriads of centuries of still increasing popu- 
lation may pass away, and the earth be still found sufficient 
for the subsistence of its inhabitants." 

I have already pointed out the error of supposing that no 
distress and difficulty would arise from an overcharged popu- 
lation before the earth absolutely refused to produce any 



50 AN ESSAY ON THE 

more. But let us imagine for a moment Mr. Godwin's 
beautiful system of equality realized in its utmost purity, and 
see how soon this difficulty might be expected to press 
under so perfect a form of society. A theory that will not 
admit of application cannot possibly be just. 

Let us suppose all the causes of misery and vice in this 
island removed. War and contention cease. Unwholesome 
trades and manufactories do not exist. Crowds no longer 
collect together in great and pestilent cities for purposes 
of court intrigue, of commerce, and vicious gratifications. 
Simple, healthy, and rational amusements take place of 
drinking, gaming and debauchery. There are no towns 
sufficiently large to have any prejudicial effects on the 
human constitution. The greater part of the happy in- 
habitants of this terrestrial paradise live in hamlets and 
farm-houses scattered over the face of the country. Every 
house is clean, airy, sufficiently roomy, and in a healthy situ- 
ation. All men are equal. The labours of luxury are at 
end. And the necessary labours of agriculture are shared 
amicably among all. The number of persons, and the pro- 
duce of the island, we suppose to be the same as at present. 
The spirit of benevolence, guided by impartial justice, will 
divide this produce among all the members of the society 
according to their wants. Though it would be impossible 
that they should all have animal food every day, yet vege- 
table food, with meat occasionally, would satisfy the desires 
of a frugal people, and would be sufficient to preserve them 
in health, strength, and spirits. 

Mr. Godwin considers marriage as a fraud and a monop- 
oly. Let us suppose the commerce of the sexes established 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 51 

upon principles of the most perfect freedom. Mr. Godwin 
does not think himself that this freedom would lead to a 
promiscuous intercourse ; and in this I perfectly agree with 
him. The love of variety is a vicious, corrupt, and unnat- 
ural taste,, and could not prevail in any great degree in a 
simple and virtuous state of society. Each man would 
probably select himself a partner, to whom he would adhere 
as long as that adherence continued to be the choice of 
both parties. It would be of little consequence, according 
to Mr. Godwin, how many children a woman had, or to 
whom they belonged. Provisions and assistance would 
spontaneously flow from the quarter in which they abounded 
to the quarter that was deficient.* And every man would 
be ready to furnish instruction to the rising generation 
according to his capacity. 

I cannot conceive a form of society so favourable upon 
the whole to population. The irremediableness of marriage, 
as it is at present constituted, undoubtedly deters many 
from entering into that state. An unshackled intercourse, 
on the contrary, would be a most powerful incitement to 
early attachments : and as we are supposing no anxiety 
about the future support of children to exist, I do not con- 
ceive that there would be one woman in a hundred, of 
twenty-three, without a family. 

With these extraordinary encouragements to population, 
and every cause of depopulation, as we have supposed, re- 
moved, the numbers would necessarily increase faster than 
in any society that has ever yet been known. I have men- 
tioned, on the authority of a pamphlet published by a Dr. 

* See B. 8. Chap. 8. P. 504. 



52 AN ESSAY ON THE 

Styles, and referred to by Dr. Price, that the inhabitants of 
the back settlements of America doubled their numbers in 
fifteen years. England is certainly a more healthy country 
than the back settlements of America ; and as we have sup- 
posed every house in the island to be airy and wholesome, 
and the encouragements to have a family greater even than 
with the back settlers, no probable reason can be assigned, 
why the population should not double itself in less, if possi- 
ble, than fifteen years. But to be quite sure that we do not 
go beyond the truth, we will only suppose the period of 
doubling to be twenty-five years, a ratio of increase, which 
is well known to have taken place throughout all the North- 
ern States of America. 

There can be little doubt, that the equalization of property 
which we have supposed, added to the circumstance of the 
labour of the whole community being directed chiefly to 
agriculture, would tend greatly to augment the produce of 
the country. But to answer the demands of a population 
increasing so rapidly, Mr. Godwin's calculation of half an 
hour a day for each man, would certainly not be sufficient. 
It is probable that the half of every man's time must be em- 
ployed for this purpose. Yet with such, or much greater 
exertions, a person who is acquainted with the nature of the 
soil in this country, and who reflects on the fertility of the 
lands already in cultivation, and the barrenness of those 
that are not cultivated, will be very much disposed to 
doubt, whether the whole average produce could possibly 
be doubled in twenty-five years from the present period. 
The only chance of success would be the ploughing up all 
the grazing countries, and putting an end almost entirely to 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 53 

the use of animal food. Yet a part of this scheme might 
defeat itself. The soil of England will not produce much 
without dressing ; and cattle seem to be necessary to make 
that species of manure which best suits the land. In China, 
it is said that the soil in some of the provinces is so fertile, as 
to produce two crops of rice in the year without dressing. 
None of the lands in England will answer to this description. 

Difficult, however, as it might be, to double the average 
produce of the island in twenty-five years, let us suppose it 
effected. At the expiration of the first period, therefore, the 
food, though almost entirely vegetable, would be sufficient 
to support in health, the doubled population of fourteen 
millions. 

During the next period of doubling, where will the food 
be found to satisfy the importunate demands of the increas- 
ing numbers? Where is the fresh land to turn up? where 
is the dressing necessary to improve that which is already in 
cultivation? There is no person with the smallest know- 
ledge of land, but would say, that it is impossible that the 
average produce of the country could be increased during 
the second twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what it 
at present yields. Yet we will suppose this increase, how- 
ever improbable, to take place. The exuberant strength of 
the argument allows of almost any concession. Even with 
this concession, however, there would be seven millions at 
the expiration of the second term, unprovided for. A quan- 
tity of food equal to the frugal support of twenty-one mil- 
lions, would be to be divided among twenty-eight millions. 

Alas ! what becomes of the picture where men lived in 
the midst of plenty : where no man was obliged to provide 



54 AN ESSA Y ON THE 

with anxiety and pain for his restless wants : where the nar- 
row principle of selfishness did not exist : where Mind was 
delivered from her perpetual anxiety about corporal sup- 
port, and free to expatiate in the field of thought which is 
congenial to her. This beautiful fabric of imagination van- 
ishes at the severe touch of truth. The spirit of benevo- 
lence, cherished and invigorated by plenty, is repressed by 
the chilling breath of want. The hateful passions that had 
vanished reappear. The mighty law of self-preservation 
expels all the softer and more exalted emotions of the soul. 
The temptations to evil are too strong for human nature to 
resist. The corn is plucked before it is ripe, or secreted in 
unfair proportions ; and the whole black train of vices that 
belong to falsehood are immediately generated. Provisions 
no longer flow in for the support of the mother with a large 
family. The children are sickly from insufficient food. The 
rosy flush of health gives place to the pallid cheek and hol- 
low eye of misery. Benevolence yet lingers in a few bosoms, 
makes some faint expiring struggles, till at length self-love 
resumes his wonted empire, and lords it triumphant over the 
world. 

No human institutions here existed, to the perverseness 
of which Mr. Godwin ascribes the original sin of the worst 
men.* No opposition had been produced by them between 
public and private good. No monopoly has been created of 
those advantages which reason directs to be left in common. 
No man had been goaded to the breach of order by unjust 
laws. Benevolence had established her reign in all hearts : 
and yet in so short a period as within fifty years, violence, 

* B. 8. Chap. 3. P. 340. 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 55 

oppression, falsehood, misery, every hateful vice and every 
form of distress, which degrade the present state of society, 
seem to have been generated by the most imperious circum- 
stances, by laws inherent in the nature of man, and absolutely 
independent of all human regulations. 

If we are not yet too well convinced of the reality of this 
melancholy picture, let us but look for a moment into the 
next period of twenty- five years ; and we shall see twenty- 
eight millions of human beings without the means of sup- 
port ; and before the conclusion of the first century, the popu- 
lation would be one hundred and twelve millions, and the 
food only sufficient for thirty-five millions, leaving seventy- 
seven millions unprovided for. In these ages want would 
be indeed triumphant, and rapine and murder must reign at 
large : and yet all this time we are supposing the produce 
of the earth absolutely unlimited, and the yearly increase 
greater than the boldest speculator can imagine. 

This is undoubtedly a very different view of the difficulty 
arising from population, from that which Mr. Godwin gives, 
when he says, " Myriads of centuries of still increasing popu- 
lation may pass away, and the earth be still found sufficient 
for the subsistence of its inhabitants." 

I am sufficiently aware that the redundant twenty-eight 
millions, or seventy-seven millions, that I have mentioned, 
could never have existed. It is a perfectly just observation 
of Mr. Godwin, that, " There is a principle in human society, 
by which population is perpetually kept down to the level of 
the means of subsistence." The sole question is, what is 
this principle ? Is it some obscure and occult cause ? Is it 
some mysterious interference of heaven, which at a certain 



56 AN ESSAY ON THE 

period strikes the men with impotence, and the women with 
barrenness? Oi is it a cause, open to our researches, within 
our view, a cause, which has constantly been observed to 
operate, though with varied force, in every state in which 
man has been placed? Is it not a degree of misery, the 
necessary and inevitable result of the laws of nature, which 
human institutions, so far from aggravating, have tended 
considerably to mitigate, though they never can remove. 

It may be curious to observe, in the case that we have 
been supposing, how some of the laws which at present gov- 
ern civilized society, would be successively dictated by the 
most imperious necessity. As man, according to Mr. God- 
win, is the creature of the impressions to which he is sub- 
ject, the goadings of want could not continue long, before 
some violations of public or private stock would necessarily 
take place. As these violations increased in number and 
extent, the more active and comprehensive intellects of the 
society would soon perceive, that while population was fast 
increasing, the yearly produce of the country would shortly 
begin to diminish. The urgency of the case would suggest 
the necessity of some immediate measures to be taken for 
the general safety. Some kind of convention would then be 
called, and the dangerous situation of the country stated in 
the strongest terms. It would be observed, that while they 
lived in the midst of plenty, it was of little consequence who 
laboured the least, or who possessed the least, as every man 
was perfectly willing and ready to supply the wants of his 
neighbour. But that the question was no longer, whether 
one man should give to another that which he did not use 
himself; but whether he should give to his neighbour the 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 57 

food which was absolutely necessary to his own existence. 
It would be represented, that the number of those that were 
in want very greatly exceeded the number and means of 
those who should supply them : that these pressing wants, 
which from the state of the produce of the country could not 
all be gratified, had occasioned some flagrant violations of 
justice : that these violations had already checked the in- 
crease of food, and would, if they were not by some means 
or other prevented, throw the whole community in confu- 
sion : that imperious necessity seemed to dictate that a 
yearly increase of produce should, if possible, be obtained 
at all events : that in order to effect this first, great, and in- 
dispensable purpose, it would be advisable to make a more 
complete division of land, and to secure every man's stock 
against violation, by the most powerful sanctions, even by 
death itself. 

It might be urged perhaps by some objectors, that, as the 
fertility of the land increased, and various accidents occurred, 
the share of some men might be much more than sufficient 
for their support, and that when the reign of self-love was 
once established, they would not distribute their surplus 
produce without some compensation in return. It would 
be observed, in answer, that this was an inconvenience 
greatly to be lamented ; but that it was an evil which bore 
no comparison to the black train of distresses that would 
inevitably be occasioned by the insecurity of property : that 
the quantity of food which one man could consume, was 
necessarily limited by the narrow capacity of the human 
stomach : that it was not certainly probable that he should 
throw away the rest ; but that even if he exchanged his sur- 



58 AN ESSAY ON THE 

plus food for the labour of others, and made them in some 
degree dependent on him, this would still be better than 
that these others should absolutely starve. 

It seems highly probable, therefore, that an administration 
of property, not very different from that which prevails in 
civilized States at present, would be established, as the best, 
though inadequate, remedy, for the evils which were pressing 
on the society. 

The next subject that would come under discussion, inti- 
mately connected with the preceding, is, the commerce 
between the sexes. It would be urged by those who had 
turned their attention to the true cause of the difficulties 
under which the community laboured, that while every man 
felt secure that all his children would be well provided for 
by general benevolence, the powers of the earth would be 
absolutely inadequate to produce food for the population 
which would inevitably ensue : that even, if the whole atten- 
tion and labour of the society were directed to this sole 
point, and if, by the most perfect security of property, and 
every other encouragement that could be thought of, the 
greatest possible increase of produce were yearly obtained ; 
yet still, that the increase of food would by no means keep 
pace with the much more rapid increase of population : that 
some check to population therefore was imperiously called 
for : that the most natural and obvious check seemed to be, 
to make every man provide for his own children :■ that this 
would operate in some respect, as a measure and guide, in 
the increase of population ; as it might be expected that no 
man would bring beings into the world, for whom he could 
not find the means of support : that where this, notvvith- 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULA TION. 59 

standing, was the case, it seemed necessary, for the example 
of others, that the disgrace and inconvenience attending 
such a conduct, should fall upon that individual who had 
thus inconsiderately plunged himself and innocent children 
in misery and want. 

The institution of marriage, or at least, of some express 
or implied obligation on every man to support his own chil- 
dren, seems to be the natural result of these reasonings in 
a community under the difficulties that we have supposed. 

The view of these difficulties presents us with a very 
natural origin of the superior disgrace which attends a 
breach of chastity in the woman, than in the man. It could 
not be expected that women should have resources sufficient 
to support their own children. When, therefore, a woman 
was connected with a man, who had entered into no com- 
pact to maintain her children, and aware of the inconven- 
iences that he might bring upon himself, had deserted her, 
these children must necessarily fall for support upon the 
society, or starve. And to prevent the frequent recurrence 
of such an inconvenience, as it would be highly unjust to 
punish so natural a fault by personal restraint or infliction, 
the men might agree to punish it with disgrace. The 
offence is besides more obvious and conspicuous in the 
woman, and less liable to any mistake. The father of a 
child may not always be known, but the same uncertainty 
cannot easily exist with regard to the mother. Where the 
evidence of the offence was most complete, and the incon- 
venience to the society at the same time the greatest, there, 
it was agreed, that the largest share of blame should fall. 
The obligation of every man to maintain his children, the 



60 AN ESSAY ON THE 

society would enforce, if there were occasion ; and the 
greater degree of inconvenience or labour, to which a fam- 
ily would necessarily subject him, added to some portion of 
disgrace which every human being must incur, who leads 
another into unhappiness, might be considered as a suffi- 
cient punishment for the man. 

That a woman should at present be almost driven from 
society, for an offence, which men commit nearly with impu- 
nity, seems to be undoubtedly a breach of natural justice. 
But the origin of the custom, as the most obvious and effect- 
ual method of preventing the frequent recurrence of a seri- 
ous inconvenience to a community, appears to be natural, 
though not perhaps perfectly justifiable. This origin, how- 
ever, is now lost in the new train of ideas which the custom 
has since generated. What at first might be dictated by 
state necessity, is now supported by female delicacy ; and 
operates with the greatest force on that part of society, 
where, if the original intention of the custom were pre- 
served, there is the least real occasion for it. 

When these two fundamental laws of society, the security 
of property and the institution of marriage, were once es- 
tablished, inequality of conditions must necessarily follow. 
Those who were born after the division of property, would 
come into a world already possessed. If their parents, from 
having too large a family, could not give them sufficient for 
their support, what are they to do in a world where every- 
thing is appropriated ? We have seen the fatal effects that 
would result to a society, if every man had a valid claim to 
an equal share of the produce of the earth. The members 
of a family which was grown too large for the original divi- 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 61 

sion of land appropriated to it, could not then demand a 
part of the surplus produce of others, as a debt of justice. 
It has appeared, that from the inevitable laws of our nature, 
some human beings must suffer from want. These are the 
unhappy persons who, in the great lottery of life, have drawn 
a blank. The numbers of these claimants would soon ex- 
ceed the ability of the surplus produce to supply. Moral 
merit is a very difficult distinguishing criterion, except in 
extreme cases. The owners of surplus produce would in 
general seek some more obvious mark of distinction. And 
it seems both natural and just, that except upon particular 
occasions, their choice should fall upon those who were able, 
and professed themselves willing, to exert their strength in 
procuring a further surplus produce ; and thus at once bene- 
fiting the community, and enabling these proprietors to 
afford assistance to greater numbers. All who were in want 
of food would be urged by imperious necessity to offer their 
labour in exchange for this article so absolutely essential to 
existence. The fund appropriated to the maintenance of 
labour, would be, the aggregate quantity of food possessed 
by the owners of land beyond their own consumption. 
When the demands upon this fund were great and numer- 
ous, it would naturally be divided in very small shares. 
Labour would be ill paid. Men would offer to work for 
a bare subsistence, and the rearing of families would be 
checked by sickness and misery. On the contrary, when this 
fund was increasing fast ; when it was great in proportion 
to the numbers of claimants ; it would be divided in much 
larger shares. No man would exchange his labour without 
receiving an ample quantity of food in return. Labourers 



62 AN ESSAY ON THE 

would live in ease and comfort ; and would consequently be 
able to rear a numerous and vigorous offspring. 

On the state of this fund, the happiness, or the degree of 
misery, prevailing among the lower classes of people in every 
known State, at present chiefly depends. And on this happi- 
ness, or degree of misery, depends the increase, stationari- 
ness, or decrease of population. 

And thus it appears, that a society constituted according 
to the most beautiful form that imagination can conceive, 
with benevolence for its moving principle, instead of self- 
love, and with every evil disposition in all its members cor- 
rected by reason and not force, would, from the inevitable 
laws of nature, and not from any original depravity of man, 
in a very short period, degenerate into a society, constructed 
upon a plan not essentially different from that which prevails 
in every known State at present ; I mean, a society divided 
into a class of proprietors, and a class of labourers, and with 
self-love for the mainspring of the great machine. 

In the supposition I have made, I have undoubtedly taken 
the increase of population smaller, and the increase of pro- 
duce greater, than they really would be. No reason can be 
assigned, why, under the circumstances I have supposed, 
population should not increase faster than in any known 
instance. If then we were to take the period of doubling 
at fifteen years, instead of twenty- five years ; and reflect upon 
the labour necessary to double the produce in so short a 
time, even if we allow it possible ; we may venture to pro- 
nounce with certainty, that if Mr. Godwin's system of 
society was established in its utmost perfection, instead of 
myriads of centuries, not thirty years could elapse, before 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 63 

its utter destruction from the simple principle of popu- 
lation. 

I have taken no notice of emigration for obvious reasons. 
If such societies were established in other parts of Europe, 
these countries would be under the same difficulties with 
regard to population, and could admit no fresh members 
into their bosoms. If this beautiful society were confined to 
this island, it must have degenerated strangely from its 
original purity, and administer but a very small portion of 
the happiness it proposed ; in short, its essential principle 
must be completely destroyed, before any of its members 
would voluntarily consent to leave it, and live under such 
governments as at present exist in Europe, or submit to the 
extreme hardships of first settlers in new regions. We well 
know, from repeated experience, how much misery and 
hardship men will undergo in their own country, before they 
can determine to desert it ; and how often the most tempting 
proposals of embarking for new settlements have been re- 
jected by people who appeared to be almost starving. 



AN ESSAY 



ON THE 



PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION; 



A VIEW OF ITS PAST AND PRESENT EFFECTS 



HUMAN HAPPINESS; 



WITH AN ENQUIRY INTO OUR PROSPECTS RESPECTING THE FUTURE 
REMOVAL OR MITIGATION OF THE EVILS WHICH IT OCCASIONS. 



A NEW EDITION, VERY MUCH ENLARGED 



By T. R. MALTHUS, A.M. 

FELLOW OF JESUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 



LONDON: 

PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, IN ST PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, 
BY T. BENSLEY, BOLT COURT, FLEET STREET. 

1803. 



PREFACE. 



The Essay on the Principle of Population, which I pub- 
lished in 1798, was suggested, as is expressed in the pref- 
ace, by a paper in Mr. Godwin's Inquirer. It was written 
on the spur of the occasion, and from the few materials 
which were then within my reach in a country situation. 
The only authors from whose writings I had deduced the 
principle, which formed the main argument of the essay, 
were Hume, Wallace, Dr. Adam Smith, and Dr. Price ; and 
my object was to apply it to try the truth of those specula- 
tions on the perfectibility of man and society, which at that 
time excited a considerable portion of the publick attention. 

In the course of the discussion, I was naturally led into 
some examination of the effects of this principle on the 
existing state of society. It appeared to account for much 
of that poverty and misery observable among the lower 
classes of people in every nation, and for those reiterated 
failures in the efforts of the higher classes to relieve them. 
The more I considered the subject in this point of view, the 
more importance it seemed to acquire ; and this considera- 
tion, joined to the degree of publick attention which the 
essay excited, determined me to turn my leisure reading 

67 



68 PREFACE. 

towards an historical examination of the effects of the prin- 
ciple of population on the past and present state of society ; 
that, by illustrating the subject more generally, and drawing 
those inferences from it, in application to the actual state 
of things which experience seemed to warrant, I might 
give it a more practical and permanent interest. 

In the course of this inquiry, I found that much more had 
been done than I had been aware of when I first published 
the essay. The poverty and misery arising from a too 
rapid increase of population had been distinctly seen, and 
the most violent remedies proposed, so long ago as the 
times of Plato and Aristotle. And of late years the subject 
has been treated in such a manner, by some of the French 
Economists, occasionally by Montesquieu, and, among our 
own writers, by Dr. Franklin, Sir James Steuart, Mr. Arthur 
Young, and Mr. Townsend, as to create a natural surprise, 
that it had not excited more of the publick attention. 

Much, however, remained yet to be done. Indepen- 
dently of the comparison between the increase of popula- 
tion and food, which had not perhaps been stated with 
sufficient force and precision ; some of the most curious and 
interesting parts of the subject had been either wholly 
omitted or treated very slightly. Though it had been stated 
distinctly, that population must always be kept down to the 
level of the means of subsistence ; yet few inquiries had been 
made into the various modes by which this level is effected ; 
and the principle had never been sufficiently pursued to its 
consequences, and those practical inferences drawn from 
it, which a strict examination of its effects on society appears 



PREFACE. 69 

These therefore are the points which I have treated most 
in detail in the following essay. In its present shape, it 
may be considered as a new work, and I should probably 
have published it as such, omitting the few parts of the 
former which I have retained, but that I wished it to form 
a whole of itself, and not to need a continual reference to 
the other. On this account I trust that no apology is neces- 
sary to the purchasers of the first edition. I should hope 
that there are some parts of it, not reprinted in this, which 
may still have their use ; as they were rejected, not because 
I thought them all of less value than what has been inserted, 
but because they did not suit the different plan of treating 
the subject which I had adopted. 

To those who either understood the subject before, or 
saw it distinctly on the perusal of the first edition, I am 
fearful that I shall appear to have treated some parts of it 
too much in detail, and to have been guilty of unnecessary 
repetitions. These faults have arisen partly from want of 
skill, and partly from intention. In drawing similar infer- 
ences from the state of society in a number of different 
countries, I found it very difficult to avoid some repetitions ; 
and in those parts of the inquiry which led to conclusions 
different from our usual habits of thinking, it appeared to 
me that, with the slightest hope of producing conviction, it 
was necessary to present them to the reader's mind at differ- 
ent times and on different occasions. I was willing to sacri- 
fice all pretensions to merit of composition, to the chance of 
making an impression on a larger class of readers. 

The main principle advanced is so incontrovertible, that, 
if I had confined myself merely to general views, I could 



70 PREFACE. 

have entrenched myself in an impregnable fortress, and the 
work in this form would probably have had a much more 
masterly air. But such general views, though they may 
advance the cause of abstract truth, rarely tend to promote 
any practical good ; and I thought that I should not do 
justice to the subject, and bring it fairly under discussion, 
if I refused to consider any of the consequences which 
appeared necessarily to flow from it, whatever these conse- 
quences might be. By pursuing this plan, however, I am 
aware that I have opened a door to many objections, and 
probably to much severity of criticism : but I console my- 
self with the reflection, that even the errors into which I 
may have fallen, by affording a handle to argument and an 
additional excitement to examination, may be subservient 
to the important end, of bringing a subject so nearly con- 
nected with the happiness of society into more general 
notice. 

Throughout the whole of the present work, I have so far 
differed in principle from the former, as to suppose another 
check to population possible, which does not strictly come 
under the head either of vice or misery ; and, in the latter 
part, I have endeavoured to soften some of the harshest con- 
clusions of the first essay. In doing this, I hope that I 
have not violated the principles of just reasoning ; nor ex- 
pressed any opinion respecting the probable improvement 
of society, in which I am not borne out by the experience 
of the past. To those who shall still think that any check to 
population whatever, would be worse than the evils which 
it would relieve, the conclusions of the former essay will 
remain in full force ; and if we adopt this opinion, we shall 



PREFACE. 71 

be compelled to acknowledge that the poverty and misery 
which prevail among the lower classes of society are abso- 
lutely irremediable. 

I have taken as much pains as I could to avoid any 
errors in the facts and calculations which have been pro- 
duced in the course of the work. Should any of them 
nevertheless turn out to be false, the reader will see that 
they will not materially affect the general tenour of the 
reasoning. 

From the crowd of materials which presented themselves 
in illustration of the first branch of the subject, I dare not 
flatter myself that I have selected the best, or arranged them 
in the most perspicuous method. To those who take an 
interest in moral and political questions, I hope that the 
novelty and importance of the subject will compensate the 
imperfections of its execution. 

London, June 8, 1803. 



CONTENTS. 



BOOK I. 

OF THE CHECKS TO POPULATION IN THE LESS CIVILIZED PARTS OF 
THE WORLD, AND IN PAST TIMES. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Statement of the subject. Ratios of the increase of popu- 
lation and food 77 

II. Of the general checks to population, and the mode of 

their operation 87 

III. Of the checks to population in the lowest stage of human 

society. 

IV. Of the checks to population among the American Indians. 
V. Of the checks to population in the islands of the South Sea. 

VI. Of the checks to population among the ancient inhabitants 

of the North of Europe. 
VII. Of the checks to population among modern pastoral 
nations. 
VIII. Of the checks to population in different parts of Africa. 
IX. Of the checks to population in Siberia, northern and 

southern. 
X. Of the checks to population in the Turkish dominions, and 

Persia. 
XI. Of the checks to population in Indostan and Tibet. 
XII. Of the checks to population in China and Japan. 
XIII. Of the checks to population among the Greeks. 
XIV. Of the checks to population among the Romans. 

73 



74 COXTE. - 



BOOK II. 



OF 7 KS TO POPULATION IN THE DIFF1 

: z. 

;" the checks to population in X 

II. Of the checks to population in - 

III. Of the checks to population in 

IV. On the fruitfulness of marriages. 

V. Of the checks to population in the middle parts of Europe. 

VI. Enects of epidemicks on tables of mo:: 

VII. Of the checks to population in Switzerland. 

VIII. Of the checks to population in France. 

IX. Of the checks to population in England. 

X. Of the checks to population in Scotland and Ireland, 

XI. General deductions from the preceding view of sock 



: OK in. 
:? the diffei - 

: :: ::; leofi 

I. - of equality. Wallace. Condorcet. 

n. Of systems of equality. Godwin. 

III. Observations on the Reply of Mr. Godwin. 

IV. Of emigration. 

V. Of the English poor h 
VI. - zontinued. 

VII. Of increasing wealth as it affects the condition of the 

VIII. Of the definitions of wealth. Agricultural and commercial 

- ; : : r. - 

IX. Different effects of the agricultural and commercial systems. 

X. Of bounties on the exportation of corn. 
XL Of the principal sources of the prevailing errors on the sub- 
: jf population. 



COXTEXTS. 



BOOK IV 



OF OUR FUTURE PROSPECTS RESPECTING THE REMOVAL OR MITIGATION 
OF THE EVILS ARISING FROM THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Of moral restraint, and the foundations of our obligation 

to practise this virtue ....... 97 

II. Of the effects which -would result to society from the 

general practice of this virtue . . . 99 

III. Of the only effectual mode of improving the condition of 

the poor. 

IV. Objections to this mode considered. 

V. Of the consequences of pursuing the opposite mode. 
VI. Effects of the knowledge of the principal cause of povertv 
on civil liberty. 
VII. Plan of the gradual abolition of the poor laws proposed. 
VIII. Of the modes of correcting the prevailing opinions on the 
subject of Population. 
IX. Of the direction of our charity. 
X. Of the errors in different plans which have been proposed, 

to improve the condition of the poor . . . .102 

XI. Of the necessity of general principles on this subject. 
XII. Of our rational expectations respecting the future im- 
provement of society. 



ESSAY, &c. 



BOOK I. 

OF THE CHECKS TO POPULATION IN THE LESS CIVI- 
LIZED PARTS OF THE WORLD AND IN PAST TIMES. 



CHAPTER I. 

Statement of the Subject. Ratios of the Increase of Population and 

Food. 

In an inquiry concerning the improvement of society, the 
mode of conducting the subject which naturally presents 
itself, is 

i. An investigation of the causes that have hitherto im- 
peded the progress of mankind towards happiness ; and, 

2. An examination into the probability of the total or 
partial removal of these causes in future. 

To enter fully into this question, and to enumerate all the 
causes that have hitherto influenced human improvement, 
would be much beyond the power of an individual. The 

77 



78 STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. RATIOS OF [bk. i 

principal object of the present essay is to examine the 
effects of one great cause intimately united with the very 
nature of man, which, though it has been constantly and 
powerfully operating since the commencement of society, 
has been little noticed by the writers who have treated this 
subject. The facts which establish the existence of this 
cause have, indeed, been repeatedly stated and acknow- 
ledged ; but its natural and necessary effects have been 
almost totally overlooked ; though probably among these 
effects may be reckoned a very considerable portion of 
that vice and misery, and of that unequal distribution of 
the bounties of nature, which it has been the unceasing 
object of the enlightened philanthropist in all ages to 
correct. 

The cause to which I allude, is the constant tendency in 
all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment pre- 
pared for it. 

It is observed by Dr. Franklin, that there is no bound to 
the prolific nature of plants or animals, but what is made by 
their crowding and interfering with each other's means of 
subsistence. Were the face of the earth, he says, vacant of 
other plants, it might be gradually sowed and overspread 
with one kind only ; as, for instance, with fennel : and were 
it empty of other inhabitants, it might in a few ages be re- 
plenished from one nation only ; as, for instance, with Eng- 
lishmen. a 

This is incontrovertibly true. Throughout the animal 
and vegetable kingdoms Nature has scattered the seeds of 
life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand ; but has 

« Franklin's Miscell. p. 9. 



ch. i] THE INCREASE OF POPULATION AND FOOD. 79 

been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment 
necessary to rear them. The germs of existence contained 
in this spot of earth, with ample food, and ample room to 
expand in, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few 
thousand years. Necessity, that imperious, all-pervading law 
of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. The 
race of plants and the race of animals shrink under this 
great restrictive law ; and man cannot by any efforts of reason 
escape from it. 

In plants and animals, the view of the subject is simple. 
They are all impelled by a powerful instinct to the increase 
of their species ; and this instinct is interrupted by no doubts 
about providing for their offspring. Wherever, therefore, 
there is liberty, the power of increase is exerted ; and the 
superabundant effects are repressed afterwards by want of 
room and nourishment, which is common to plants and 
animals • and among animals, by their becoming the prey 
of each other. 

The effects of this check on man are more complicated. 
Impelled to the increase of his species by an equally 
powerful instinct, reason interrupts his career, and asks 
him whether he may not bring beings into the world, for 
whom he cannot provide the means of support. If he 
attend to this natural suggestion, the restriction too fre- 
quently produces vice. If he hear it not, the human race 
will be constantly endeavouring to increase beyond the 
means of subsistence. But as by that law of our nature 
which makes food necessary to the life of man, population 
can never actually increase beyond the lowest nourishment 
capable of supporting it \ a strong check on population, from 



80 STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. RATIOS OF [bk. i 

the difficulty of acquiring food, must be constantly in opera- 
tion. This difficulty must fall somewhere ; and must neces- 
sarily be severely felt in some or other of the various forms 
of misery, or the fear of misery, by a large portion of man- 
kind. 

That population has this constant tendency to increase 
beyond the means of subsistence, and that it is kept to its 
necessary level by these causes, will sufficiently appear from 
a review of the different states of society in which man has 
existed. But before we proceed to this review, the subject 
will perhaps be seen in a clearer light, if we endeavour to 
ascertain what would be the natural increase of population 
if left to exert itself with perfect freedom ; and what might 
be expected to be the rate of increase in the productions 
of the earth, under the most favourable circumstances of 
human industry. A comparison of these two rates of in- 
crease will enable us to judge of the force of that tendency 
in population to increase beyond the means of subsistence, 
which has been stated to exist. 

It will be allowed, that no country has hitherto been 
known, where the manners were so pure and simple, and the 
means of subsistence so abundant, that no check whatever 
has existed to early marriages from the difficulty of provid- 
ing for a family ; and no waste of the human species has been 
occasioned afterwards by vicious customs, by towns, by un- 
healthy occupations, or too severe labour. Consequently in 
no state that we have yet known, has the power of population 
been left to exert itself with perfect freedom. 

Whether the law of marriage be instituted or not, the dic- 
tate of nature and virtue seems to be an early attachment to 



CH. i] THE INCREASE OF POPULA TION AND FOOD. 81 

one woman ; and where there were no impediments of any 
kind in the way of a union to which such an attachment 
would lead, and no causes of depopulation afterwards, the 
increase of the human species would be evidently much 
greater than any increase which has been hitherto known. 

In the northern states of America, where the means of 
subsistence have been more ample, the manners of the people 
more pure, and the checks to early marriages fewer, than in 
any of the modern states of Europe, the population was 
found to double itself, for some successive periods every 
twenty-five years. Yet, even during these periods, in some 
of the towns, the deaths exceeded the births ; a and they 
consequently required a continued supply from the country 
to support their population. 

In the back settlements, where the sole employment is 
agriculture, and vicious customs and unwholesome occu- 
pations are little known, the population was found to 
double itself in fifteen years. 6 Even this extraordinary rate 
of increase is probably short of the utmost power of popu- 
lation. Very severe labour is requisite to clear a fresh 
country ; such situations are not in general considered as 
particularly healthy ; and the inhabitants probably were oc- 
casionally subject to the incursions of the Indians, which 
might destroy some lives, or at any rate diminish the fruits 
of industry. 

According to a table of Euler, calculated on a mortality 
of i in 36, if the births be to the deaths in the proportion of 
3 to 1, the period of doubling will be only i2i years. And 

a Price's Observ. on Revers. Pay. vol. i. p. 274. 
& Id. p. 282. 
G 



82 STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. RATIOS OF [bk. i 

these proportions are not only possible suppositions, but have 
actually occurred for short periods in more countries than one. 

Sir William Petty supposes a doubling possible in so short 
a time as ten years." 

But to be perfectly sure that we are far within the truth, 
we will take the slowest of these rates of increase, a rate in 
which all concurring testimonies agree, and which has been 
repeatedly ascertained to be from procreation only. 

It may safely be pronounced therefore, that population, 
when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five 
years, or increases in a geometrical ratio. 

The rate according to which the productions of the 
earth may be supposed to increase, it will not be so easy 
to determine. Of this, however, we may be perfectly 
certain, that the ratio of their increase must be totally 
of a different nature from the ratio of the increase of pop- 
ulation. A thousand millions are just as easily doubled 
every twenty-five years by the power of population as a 
thousand. But the food to support the increase from the 
greater number will by no means be obtained with the same 
facility. Man is necessarily confined in room. When acre 
has been added to acre till all the fertile land is occupied, 
the yearly increase of food must depend upon the melioration 
of the land already in possession. This is a stream, which, 
from the nature of all soils, instead of increasing, must be 
gradually diminishing. But population, could it be supplied 
with food, would go on with unexhausted vigour ; and the 
increase of one period would furnish the power of a greater 
increase the next, and this, without any limit. 

« Polit. Arith. p. 14. 



ch. i] THE INCREASE OF POPULA TION AND FO OD. 83 

From the accounts we have of China and Japan, it may 
be fairly doubted, whether the best directed efforts of human 
industry could double the produce of these countries even 
once in any number of years. There are many parts of the 
globe, indeed, hitherto uncultivated and almost unoccupied ; 
but the right of exterminating, or driving into a corner 
where they must starve, even the inhabitants of these thinly- 
peopled regions, will be questioned in a moral view. The 
process of improving their minds and directing their indus- 
try, would necessarily be slow; and during this time, as 
population would regularly keep pace with the increasing 
produce, it would rarely happen that a great degree of 
knowledge and industry would have to operate at once upon 
rich unappropriated soil. Even where this might take place, 
as it does sometimes in new colonies, a geometrical ratio 
increases with such extraordinary rapidity, that the advantage 
could not last long. If America continue increasing, which 
she certainly will do, though not with the same rapidity as 
formerly, the Indians will be driven further and further 
back into the country, till the whole race is ultimately 
exterminated. 

These observations are, in a degree, applicable to all the 
parts of the earth where the soil is imperfectly cultivated. 
To exterminate the inhabitants of the greatest part of Asia 
and Africa, is a thought that could not be admitted for a 
moment. To civilize and direct the industry of the various 
tribes of Tartars, and Negroes, would certainly be a work 
of considerable time, and of variable and uncertain suc- 
cess. 

Europe is by no means so fully peopled as it might be. 



84 ST A TEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. RA TIOS OF [bk. i 

In Europe there is the fairest chance that human industry- 
may receive its best direction. The science of agriculture 
has been much studied in England and Scotland ; and there 
is still a great portion of uncultivated land in these coun- 
tries. Let us consider at what rate the produce of this 
island might be supposed to increase under circumstances 
the most favourable to improvement. 

If it be allowed that by the best possible policy, and great 
encouragements to agriculture, the average produce of the 
island could be doubled in the first twenty-five years, it will 
be allowing, probably, a greater increase than could with 
reason be expected. 

In the next twenty-five years, it is impossible to suppose 
that the produce could be quadrupled. It would be con- 
trary to all our knowledge of the properties of land. The 
improvement of the barren parts would be a work of time 
and labour ; and it must be evident to those who have the 
slightest acquaintance with agricultural subjects, that in pro- 
portion as cultivation extended, the additions that could 
yearly be made to the former average produce, must be 
gradually and regularly diminishing. That we may be the 
better able to compare the increase of population and food, 
let us make a supposition, which, without pretending to 
accuracy, is clearly more favourable to the power of pro- 
duction in the earth, than any experience we have had of 
its qualities will warrant. 

Let us suppose that the yearly additions which might be 
made to the former average produce, instead of decreasing, 
which they certainly would do, were to remain the same ; 
and that the produce of this island might be increased every 



ch. i] THE INCREASE OF POPULA TION AND FOOD. 85 

twenty-five years, by a quantity equal to what it at present 
produces : the most enthusiastic speculator cannot sup- 
pose a greater increase than this. In a few centuries it 
would make every acre of land in the island like a garden. 

If this supposition be applied to the whole earth, and if 
it be allowed that the subsistence for man which the earth 
affords might be increased every twenty-five years by a 
quantity equal to what it at present produces, this will be 
supposing a rate of increase much greater than we can imag- 
ine that any possible exertions of mankind could make it. 

It may be fairly pronounced therefore, that, considering 
the present average state of the earth, the means of subsist- 
ence, under circumstances the most favourable to human 
industry, could not possibly be made to increase faster than 
in an arithmetical ratio. 

The necessary effects of these two different rates of in- 
crease, when brought together, will be very striking. Let 
us call the population of this island eleven millions ; and sup- 
pose the present produce equal to the easy support of sucli 
a number. In the first twenty-five years the population 
would be twenty-two millions, and the food being also 
doubled, the means of subsistence would be equal to this 
increase. In the next twenty-five years, the population 
would be forty-four millions, and the means of subsistence 
only equal to the support of thirty-three millions. In the 
next period the population would be eighty-eight millions, 
and the means of subsistence just equal to the support of 
half that number. And, at the conclusion of the first cen- 
tury, the population would be a hundred and seventy-six 
millions, and the means of subsistence only equal to the 



86 STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT [bk. i 

support of fifty-five millions, leaving a population of a hun- 
dred and twenty-one millions totally unprovided for. 

Taking the whole earth, instead of this island, emigration 
would of course be excluded ; and, supposing the present 
population equal to a thousand millions, the human species 
would increase as the numbers, i, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 
256, and subsistence as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. In two 
centuries the population would be to the means of subsist- 
ence as 256 to 9; in three centuries as 4096 to 13, and 
in two thousand years the difference would be almost 
incalculable. 

In this supposition no limits whatever are placed to the 
produce of the earth. It may increase for ever, and be 
greater than any assignable quantity ; yet still the power of 
population being in every period so much superior, the 
increase of the human species can only be kept down to 
the level of the means of subsistence by the constant oper- 
ation of the strong law of necessity, acting as a check upon 
the greater power. 



CHAPTER II. 

Of the general Checks to Population, and the Mode of their Operation. 

The checks to population, which are constantly operat- 
ing with more or less force in every society, and keep down 
the number to the level of the means of subsistence, may be 
classed under two general heads ; the preventive and the 
positive checks. 

The preventive check, is peculiar to man, and arises from 
that distinctive superiority in his reasoning faculties, which 
enables him to calculate distant consequences. Plants and 
animals have apparently no doubts about the future support 
of their offspring. The checks to their indefinite increase, 
therefore, are all positive. But man cannot look around 
him, and .. see the distress which frequently presses upon 
those who have large families ; he cannot contemplate his 
present possessions or earnings, which he now nearly con- 
sumes himself, and calculate the amount of each share, 
when with very little addition they must be divided, perhaps, 
among seven or eight, without feeling a doubt, whether if 
he follow the bent of his inclinations, he may be able to 
support the offspring which he will probably bring into the 
world. In a state of equality, if such can exist, this would 
be the simple question. In the present state of society, 

87 



38 OF THE GENERAL CHECKS TO POPULATION, [bk. i 

other considerations occur. Will he not lower his rank in 
life, and be obliged to give up in great measure his former 
society? Does any mode of employment present itself by 
which he may reasonably hope to maintain a family? Will 
he not at any rate subject himself to greater difficulties, and 
more severe labour than in his single state ? Will he not be 
unable to transmit to his children the same advantages of 
education and improvement that he had himself possessed ? 
Does he even feel secure that, should he have a large family, 
his utmost exertions can save them from rags, and squalid 
poverty, and their consequent degradation in the commu- 
nity ? And may he not be reduced to the grating necessity 
of forfeiting his independence, and of being obliged to the 
sparing hand of charity for support? 

These considerations are calculated to prevent, and cer- 
tainly do prevent, a great number of persons in all civilized 
nations from pursuing the dictate of nature in an early at- 
tachment to one woman. 

If this restraint do not produce vice, as in many instances 
is the case, and very generally so among the middle and 
higher classes of men, it is undoubtedly the least evil that 
can arise from the principle of population. Considered as a 
restraint on an inclination, otherwise innocent, and always 
natural, it must be allowed to produce a certain degree of 
temporary unhappiness ; but evidently slight, compared 
with the evils which result from any of the other checks 
to population. 

When this restraint produces vice, as it does most fre- 
quently among men, and among a numerous class of females, 
the evils which follow are but too conspicuous. A pro- 



ch. ii] AND THE MODE OF THEIR OPERA TION. 89 

miscuous intercourse to such a degree as to prevent the 
birth of children, seems to lower in the most marked manner 
the dignity of human nature. It cannot be without its effect 
on men, and nothing can be more obvious than its tendency 
to degrade the female character, and to destroy all its most 
amiable and distinguishing characteristics. Add to which, 
that among those unfortunate females with which all great 
towns abound, more real distress and aggravated misery are, 
perhaps, to be found, than in any other department of human 
life. 

When a general corruption of morals, with regard to the 
sex, pervades all the classes of society, its effects must neces- 
sarily be, to poison the springs of domestic happiness, to 
weaken conjugal and parental affection, and to lessen the 
united exertions and ardour of parents in the care and edu- 
cation of their children ; effects, which cannot take place 
without a decided diminution of the general happiness and 
virtue of society ; particularly, as the necessity of art in the 
accomplishment and conduct of intrigues, and in the con- 
cealment of their consequences, necessarily leads to many 
other vices. 

The positive checks to population are extremely various, 
and include every cause, whether arising from vice or mis- 
ery, which in any degree contribute to shorten the natural 
duration of human life. Under this head therefore may be 
enumerated, all unwholesome occupations, severe labour and 
exposure to the seasons, extreme poverty, bad nursing of 
children, great towns, excesses of all kinds, the whole train of 
common diseases and epidemics, wars, pestilence, plague, 
and famine. 



90 OF THE GENERAL CHECKS TO POPULATION, [bk. i 

On examining these obstacles to the increase of popula- 
tion which are classed under the heads of preventive and 
positive checks, it will appear that they are all resolvable 
into moral restraint, vice, and misery. 

Of the preventive checks, that which is not followed by 
irregular gratifications, may properly be termed moral 
restraint. 1 

Promiscuous intercourse, unnatural passions, violations of 
the marriage bed, and improper arts to conceal the conse- 
quences of irregular connections, are preventive checks that 
clearly come under the head of vice. 

Of the positive checks, those which appear to arise una- 
voidably from the laws of nature, may be called exclusively 
misery ; and those which we obviously bring upon ourselves, 
such as wars, excesses, and many others which it would be 
in our power to avoid, are of a mixed nature. They are 
brought upon us by vice, and their consequences are mis- 
ery.* 

1 [It will be observed, that I here use the term moral in its most confined 
sense. By moral restraint I would be understood to mean a restraint from 
marriage from prudential motives, with a conduct strictly moral during the 
period of this restraint; and I have never intentionally deviated from this 
sense. When I have wished to consider the restraint from marriage uncon- 
nected with its. consequences, I have either called it prudential restraint, or 
a part of the preventive check, of which indeed it forms the principal branch. 

In my review of the different stages of society, I have been accused of not 
allowing sufficient weight in the preventi©n of population to moral restraint; 
but when the confined sense of the term, which I have here explained, is 
adverted to, I am fearful that I shall not be found to have erred much in 
this respect. I should be very glad to believe myself mistaken. Note added 
later.] 

a As the general consequence of vice is misery, and as this consequence 
is the precise reason why an action is termed vicious, it may appear that 
the term misery alone would be here sufficient, and that it is superfluous to 






ch. ii] AND THE MODE OF THEIR OPERATION. 91 

In every country, some of these checks are, with more or 
less force, in constant operation ; yet, notwithstanding their 
general prevalence, there are few states in which there is 
not a constant effort in the population to increase beyond 
the means of subsistence. This constant effort as constantly 
tends to subject the lower classes of society to distress, and 
to prevent any great permanent melioration of their condi- 
tion. 

These effects, in the present state of society, seem to be 
produced in the following manner. We will suppose the 
means of subsistence in any country just equal to the easy 
support of its inhabitants. The constant effort towards 
population, which is found to act even in the most vicious 
societies, increases the number of people before the means 
of subsistence are increased. The food therefore which 
before supported eleven millions, must now be divided 
among eleven millions and a half. The poor consequently 
must live much worse, and many of them be reduced to 
severe distress. The number of labourers also being above 

use both. But the rejection of the term vice would introduce a consider- 
able confusion into our language and ideas. We want it particularly to 
distinguish those actions, the general tendency of which is to produce mis- 
ery, but which, in their immediate or individual effects, may produce 
perhaps exactly the contrary. The gratification of all our passions in its 
immediate effect is happiness, not misery ; and, in individual instances, even 
the remote consequences (at least in this life) come under the same 
denomination. I have little doubt that there have been some irregular 
connections with women, which have added to the happiness of both parties, 
and have injured no one. These individual actions therefore cannot come 
under the head of misery. But they are still evidently vicious, because 
an action is so denominated the general tendency of which is to produce 
misery, whatever may be its individual effect ; and no person can doubt 
the general tendency of an illicit intercourse between the sexes, to injure the 
happiness of society. 



92 OF THE GENERAL CHECKS TO POPULATION, [bk.i 

the proportion of work in the market, the price of labour 
must tend to fall ; while the price of provisions would at the 
same time tend to rise. The labourer therefore must do 
more work to earn the same as he did before. During this 
season of distress, the discouragements to marriage, and the 
difficulty of rearing a family are so great, that population 
is nearly at a stand. In the meantime, the cheapness of 
labour, the plenty of labourers, and the necessity of an 
increased industry among them, encourage cultivators to 
employ more labour upon their land ■ to turn up fresh soil, 
and to manure and improve more completely what is 
already in tillage ; till ultimately the means of subsistence 
may become in the same proportion to the population as at 
the period from which we set out. The situation of the 
labourer being then again tolerably comfortable, the re- 
straints to population are in some degree loosened ; and, 
after a short period, the same retrograde and progressive 
movements, with respect to happiness, are repeated. 

This sort of oscillation will not probably be obvious to 
common view; and it may be difficult even for the most 
attentive observer to calculate its periods. Yet that, in 
the generality of old states, some such vibration does exist, 
though in a much less marked, and in a much more 
irregular manner, than I have described it, no reflecting 
man who considers the subject deeply can well doubt. 

One principal reason why this oscillation has been less 
remarked, and less decidedly confirmed by experience than 
might naturally be expected, is, that the histories of man- 
kind which we possess, are, in general, histories only of the 
higher classes. We have not many accounts, that can be 



ch.ii] AND THE MODE OF THEIR OPERATION. 93 

depended upon, of the manners and customs of that part 
of mankind where these retrograde and progressive move- 
ments chiefly take place. A satisfactory history of this 
kind, of one people and of one period, would require the 
constant and minute attention of many observing minds in 
local and general remarks on the state of the lower classes 
of society, and the causes that influenced it ; and, to draw 
accurate inferences upon this subject, a succession of such 
historians for some centuries would be necessary. This 
branch of statistical knowledge has, of late years, been 
attended to in some countries," and we may promise our- 
selves a clearer insight into the internal structure of human 
society from the progress of these inquiries. But the sci- 
ence may be said yet to be in its infancy, and many of the 
objects, on which it would be desirable to have information, 
have been either omitted or not stated with sufficient accu- 
racy. Among these perhaps may be reckoned the propor- 
tion of the number of adults to the number of marriages ; 
the extent to which vicious customs have prevailed in con- 
sequence of the restraints upon matrimony ; the comparative 
mortality among the children of the most distressed part of 
the community, and of those who live rather more at their 
ease ; the variations in the real price of labour ; the observ- 
able differences in the state of the lower classes of society 
with respect to ease and happiness, at different times during 
a certain period; and very accurate registers of births, 



« The judicious questions which Sir John Sinclair circulated in Scotland, 
and the valuable accounts which he has collected in that part of the island, 
do him the highest honour; and these accounts will ever remain an extraor- 
dinary monument of the learning, good sense, and general information of 



94 OF THE GENERAL CHECKS TO POPULATION, [bk. i 

deaths, and marriages, which are of the utmost importance 
in this subject. 

A faithful history, including such particulars, would tend 
greatly to elucidate the manner in which the constant check 
upon population acts ; and would probably prove the exist- 
ence of the retrograde and progressive movements that have 
been mentioned ; though the times of their vibration must 
necessarily be rendered irregular from the operation of 
many interrupting causes ; such as, the introduction or 
failure of certain manufactures ; a greater or less prevalent 
spirit of agricultural enterprise ; years of plenty, or years of 
scarcity; wars, sickly seasons, poor laws, emigration, and 
other causes of a similar nature. 

A circumstance which has perhaps more than any other, 
contributed to conceal this oscillation from common view, 
is, the difference between the nominal and real • price of 
labour. It very rarely happens that the nominal price of 
labour universally falls ; but ws well know that it frequently 
remains the same, while the n®minal price of provisions has 
been gradually rising. This is, in effect, a real fall in the 

the clergy of Scotland. It is to be regretted that the adjoining parishes are 
not put together in the work, which would have assisted the memory both 
in attaining and recollecting the state of particular districts. The repetitions 
and contradictory opinions which occur are not in my opinion so objec- 
tionable, as, to the result of such testimony, more faith may be given than 
we could possibly give to the testimony of any individual. Even were this 
result drawn for us by some master hand, though much valuable time 
would undoubtedly be saved, the information would not be so satisfactory. 
If, with a few subordinate improvements, this work had contained accurate 
and complete registers for the last 150 years, it would have been inestima- 
ble, and would have exhibited a better picture of the internal state of a 
country, than has yet been presented to the world. But this last most essen- 
tial improvement no diligence could have effected. 



ch. ii] AND THE MODE OF THEIR OPERA TION. 95 

price of labour ; and, during this period, the condition of 
the lower classes of the community must be gradually 
growing worse. But the farmers and capitalists are growing 
rich from the real cheapness of labour. Their increasing 
capitals enable them to employ a greater number of men ; 
and, as the population had probably suffered some check 
from the greater difficulty of supporting a family, the demand 
for labour, after a certain period, would be great in pro- 
portion to the supply, and its price would of course rise, if 
left to find its natural level ; and thus the wages of labour, 
and consequently the condition of the lower classes of 
society, might have progressive and retrograde movements, 
though the price of labour might never nominally fall. 

In savage life, where there is no regular price of labour, 
it is little to be doubted that similar oscillations take 
place. When population has increased nearly to the utmost 
limits of the food, all the preventive and the positive checks 
will naturally operate with increased force. Vicious habits 
with respect to the sex will be more general, the exposing 
of children more frequent, and both the probability and 
fatality, of wars and epidemicks will be considerably greater ; 
and these causes will probably continue their operation till 
the population is sunk below the level of the food ; and then 
the return to comparative plenty will again produce an in- 
crease, and, after a certain period, its further progress will 
again be checked by the same causes. 

a Sir James Steuart very justly compares the generative faculty to a spring 
loaded with a variable weight (Polit. Econ., vol. i., b. i., c. 4, p. 20) which 
would of course produce exactly that kind of oscillation which has been 
mentioned. In the first book of his Political Economy, he has explained 
many parts of the subject of population very ably. 



96 CHECKS TO POPULATION. [bk. i 

But without attempting to establish in all cases these pro- 
gressive and retrograde movements in different countries, 
which would evidently require more minute histories than 
we possess, the following propositions are proposed to be 
proved : 

i. Population is necessarily limited by the means of sub- 
sistence. 

2. Population invariably increases, where the means of 
subsistence increase, unless prevented by some very power- 
ful and obvious checks. 1 

3. These checks, and the checks which repress the 
superior power of population, and keep its effects on a 
level with the means of subsistence, are all resolvable into 
moral restraint, vice, and misery. 

The first of these propositions scarcely needs illustration. 
The second and third will be sufficiently established by a 
review of the immediate checks to population in the past 
and present state of society. 

This review will be the subject of the following chapters. 

1 [I have expressed myself in this cautious manner, because I believe 
there are some instances where population does not keep up to the level 
of the means of subsistence. But these are extreme cases ; and, generally 
speaking, it might be said that — 

1. Population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence. 

2. Population always increases where the means of subsistence increase. 

3. The checks which repress the superior power of population, and keep 
its effects on a level with the means of subsistence, are all resolvable into 
moral restraint, vice, and misery. 

It should be observed that, by an increase in the means of subsistence, 
is here meant such an increase as will enable the mass of the society to 
command more food. An increase might certainly take place which in the 
actual state of a particular society would not be distributed to the lower 
classes, and consequently would give no stimulus to the population. Note 
added later, .1 



BOOK IV. 

OF OUR FUTURE PROSPECTS RESPECTING THE RE- 
MOVAL OR MITIGATION OF THE EVILS ARISING 
FROM THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION. 



CHAPTER I. 

Of moral restraint, and the foundations of our obligation to practise 
this virtue. 

As it appears, that in the actual state of every society 
which has come within our review, the natural progress of 
population has been constantly and powerfully checked ; and 
as it seems evident, that no improved form of government, 
no plans of emigration, no benevolent institutions, and no 
degree or direction of national industry, can prevent the 
continued action of a great check to increase in some 
form or other ; it follows, that we must submit to it as an 
inevitable law of nature ; and the only inquiry that remains, 
is, how it may take place with the least possible prejudice 
to the virtue and happiness of human society. The various 
checks to population, which have been observed to prevail 
in the same and different countries, seem all to be resolv- 
able into moral restraint, vice, and misery ; and if our choice 
h 97 



98 OF MORAL RESTRAINT. [bk. iv 

be confined to these three, we cannot long hesitate in our 
decision respecting which it would be most eligible to en- 
courage. 

In the first edition of this essay, I observed, that, as from 
the laws of nature it appeared, that some check to popula- 
tion must exist, it was better that this check should arise 
from a foresight of the difficulties attending a family, and 
the fear of dependent poverty, than from the actual presence 
of want and sickness. This idea will admit of being pursued 
farther, and I am inclined to think, that, from the prevailing 
opinions respecting population, which undoubtedly orig- 
inated in barbarous ages, and have been continued and 
circulated by that part of every community, which may be 
supposed to be interested in their support, we have been 
prevented from attending to the clear dictates of reason and 
nature on this subject. . . . 

. . . Our obligation not to marry till we have a fair prospect 
of being able to support our children . . . will appear to de- 
serve the attention of the moralist, if it can be proved, 
that an attention to this obligation is of more effect in the 
prevention of misery, than all the other virtues combined ; 
and that if, in violation of this duty, it were the general cus- 
tom to follow the first impulse of nature and marry at the age 
of puberty, the universal prevalence of every known virtue in 
the greatest conceivable degree, would fail of rescuing society 
from the most wretched and desperate state of want, and all 
the diseases and famines which usually accompany it. 



CHAPTER II. 

Of the Effects which would result to Society from the general practice of 
this virtue. 

One of the principal reasons, which have prevented an 
assent to the doctrine of the constant tendency of popula- 
tion to increase beyond the means of subsistence, is, a great 
unwillingness to believe, that the Deity would, by the laws 
of nature, bring beings into existence, which, by the laws of 
nature, could not be supported in that existence. But if, in 
addition to that general activity and direction of our industry 
put in motion by these laws, we further consider that the 
incidental evils arising from them, are constantly directing 
our attention to the proper check to population, moral re- 
straint ; and if it appear, that by a strict obedience to those 
duties which are pointed out to us by the light of nature and 
reason, and are confirmed and sanctioned by revelation, these 
evils may be avoided, the objection will, I trust, be removed, 
and all apparent imputation on the goodness of the Deity 
be done away. 

The heathen moralists never represented happiness as 
attainable on earth, but through the medium of virtue ; and 
among their virtues, prudence ranked in the first class, and 
by some was even considered as including every other. The 
christian religion places our present as well as future happi- 

99 



100 OF THE EFFECTS ON SOCIETY [bk. iv 

ness in the exercise of those virtues which tend to fit us for 
a state of superior enjoyment ; and the subjection of the 
passions to the guidance of reason, which, if not the whole, 
is a principal branch of prudence, is in consequence most 
particularly inculcated. 

If, for the sake of illustration, we might be permitted to 
draw a picture of society, in which, each individual endeav- 
oured to attain happiness by the strict fulfilment of those 
duties which the most enlightened of the antient philoso- 
phers deduced from the laws of nature, and which have 
been directly taught, and received such powerful sanctions 
in the moral code of Christianity, it would present a very 
different scene from that which we now contemplate. Every 
act which was prompted by the desire of immediate grati- 
fication, but which threatened an ultimate overbalance of 
pain, would be considered as a breach of duty ; and, conse- 
quently, no man whose earnings were only sufficient to main- 
tain two children, would put himself in a situation in which 
he might have to maintain four or five, however he might 
be prompted to it by the passion of love. This prudential 
restraint, if it were generally adopted, by narrowing the 
supply of labour in the market, would, in the natural course 
of things, soon raise its price. The period of delayed grati- 
fication would be passed in saving the earnings which were 
above the wants of a single man, and in acquiring habits of 
sobriety, industry, and economy, which would enable him, 
in a few years, to enter into the matrimonial contract without 
fear of its consequences. The operation of the preventive 
check in this way, by constantly keeping the population 
within the limits of the food, though constantly following its 



ch. ii] OF MORAL RESTRAINT. 101 

increase, would give a real value to the rise of wages, and 
the sums saved by labourers before marriage, very different 
from those forced advances in the price of labour, or arbi- 
trary parochial donations, which, in proportion to their mag- 
nitude and extensiveness, must of necessity be followed by 
a proportional advance in the price of provisions. As the 
wages of labour would thus be sufficient to maintain with 
decency a large family, and as every married couple would 
set out with a sum for contingencies, all squalid poverty 
would be removed from society, or, at least, be confined to 
a very few, who had fallen into misfortunes against which, 
no prudence or foresight could provide. 

The interval between the age of puberty, and the period 
at which each individual might venture on marriage, must, 
according to the supposition, be passed in strict chastity ; 
because the law of chastity cannot be violated without pro- 
ducing evil. The effect of anything like a promiscuous 
intercourse, which prevents the birth of children, is evidently 
to weaken the best affections of the heart, and, in a very 
marked manner, to degrade the female character. And any 
other intercourse, would, without improper arts, bring as 
many children into the society as marriage, with a much 
greater probability of their becoming a burden to it. 

These considerations show that the virtue of chastity is not, 
as some have supposed, a forced produce of artificial society; 
but that it has the most real and solid foundation in nature 
and reason ; being apparently the only virtuous means of 
avoiding the vice and misery which result so often from the 
principle of population. . . . 



CHAPTER X. 

Of the errors in different plans zvhich have been proposed, to improve 
the condition of the Poor. 

. . . Arthur Young, in most of his works, appears clearly 
to understand the principle of population, and is fully aware 
of the evils which must necessarily result from an increase 
of people beyond the demand for labour, and the means of 
comfortable subsistence. In his tour through France, he 
has particularly laboured this point, and shown most forcibly 
the misery, which results, in that country, from the excess of 
population occasioned by the too great division of property. 
Such an increase, he justly calls, merely a multiplication of 
wretchedness. " Couples marry and procreate on the idea, 
not the reality, of a maintenance ; they increase beyond the 
demand of towns and manufactures; and the consequence 
is, distress, and numbers dying of diseases arising from 
insufficient nourishment." a . . . 

After having once so clearly understood the principle of 
population as to express these and many other sentiments on 
the subject, equally just and important, it is not a little sur- 
prising to find Mr. Young, in a pamphlet, intitled, The 
Question of Scarcity plainly stated, and Remedies considered, 
{published in 1800,) observing that "the means which would 

<* Travels in France, vol. i. c. xii. p. 408. 
102 



ch. x] OF THE ERRORS IN DIFFERENT PLANS. 103 

of all others perhaps tend most surely to prevent future 
scarcities so oppressive to the poor as the present, would be 
to secure to every country labourer in the kingdom, that has 
three children and upwards, half an acre of land for potatoes, 
and grass enough to feed one or two cows. ... If each 
had his ample potatoe ground and a cow, the price of wheat 
would be of little more consequence to them than it is to 
their brethren in Ireland." 

" Every one admits the system to be good, but the question 
is how to enforce it." 

I was by no means aware, that the excellence of the system 
had been so generally admitted. For myself I strongly pro- 
test against being included in the general term of every one, 
as I should consider the adoption of this system, as the most 
cruel and fatal blow to the happiness of the lower classes of 
people in this country, that they had ever received. 

Mr. Young, however, goes on to say, that, " The magnitude 
of the object should make us disregard any difficulties, but 
such as are insuperable : none such would probably occur if 
something like the following means were resorted to : 

" I. Where there are common pastures, to give to a labour- 
ing man having children a right to demand an allot- 
ment proportioned to the family, to be set out by the parish 
officers, etc., . . . and a cow bought. Such labourer to 
have both for life, paying 40s. a year till the price of the cow, 
etc., was reimbursed : at his death to go to the labourer 
having the most numerous family, for life, paying 
shillings a week to the widow of his predecessor. 

" II. Labourers thus demanding allotments by reason of 
their families to have land assigned, and cows bought, till the 



104 OF THE ERRORS [bk. iv 

proportion so allotted amounts to one of the extent of 

the common. 

" III. In parishes where there are no commons, and the 
quality of the land adequate, every cottager having 
children, to whose cottage there is not within a given time 
land sufficient for a cow, and half an acre of potatoes, 
assigned at a fair average rent, subject to appeal to the ses- 
sions, to have a right to demand shillings per week of 
the parish for every child, till such land be assigned ; leaving 
to landlords and tenants the means of doing it. Cows to be 
found by the parish under an annual reimbursement. 

" The great object is, by means of milk and potatoes, to 
take the mass of the country poor from the consumption of 
wheat, and to give them substitutes equally wholesome and 
nourishing, and as independent of scarcities, natural and 
artificial, as the providence of the Almighty will admit." 

Would not this plan operate, in the most direct manner, 
as an encouragement to marriage and a bounty on children, 
which Mr. Young has with so much justice reprobated in his 
travels in France ? and does he seriously think that it would 
be an eligible thing, to feed the mass of the people in this 
country on milk and potatoes, and make them as independent 
of the price of corn, and of the demand for labour, as their 
brethren in Ireland ? 

The specifick cause of the poverty and misery of the lower 
classes of people in France and Ireland, is, that from the 
extreme subdivision of property in the one country, and the 
facility of obtaining a potatoe ground in the other, a popula- 
tion is brought into existence, which is not demanded by the 
quantity of capital and employment in the country ; and the 



ch.x] IN DIFFERENT PIANS. 105 

consequence of which must therefore necessarily be ... to 
lower in general the price of labour by too great competition ; 
from which must result complete indigence to those who 
cannot find employment, and an incomplete subsistence even 
to those who can. 

The obvious tendency of Mr. Young's plan is, by en- 
couraging marriage and furnishing a cheap food, independent 
of the price of corn, and, of course, of the demand for labour, 
to place the lower classes of people exactly in this situation. 
. . . Mr. Young's plan would be incomparably more power- 
ful in encouraging a population beyond the demand for 
labour than our present poor laws. A laudable repug- 
nance to the receiving of parish relief, arising partly from a 
spirit of independence not yet extinct, and partly, from the 
disagreeable mode in which the relief is given, undoubtedly 
deters many from marrying with a certainty of falling on the 
parish ; and the proportion of marriages to the whole popu- 
lation, which has before been noticed, clearly proves that 
the poor laws, though they have undoubtedly a considera- 
ble influence in this respect, do not encourage marriage so 
much as might be expected from theory. But the case would 
be very different, if, when a labourer had an early marriage 
in contemplation, the terrific forms of workhouses and par- 
ish officers, which might disturb his resolution, were to be 
exchanged for the fascinating visions of land and cows. 
If the love of property, as Mr. Young has repeatedly said, 
will make a man do much, it would be rather strange if it 
would not make him marry ; an action to which, it appears 
from experience, that he is by no means disinclined. 

The population which would be thus called into being, 



106 OF THE ERRORS [bk. iv 

would be supported by the extended cultivation of potatoes, 
and would of course go on without any reference to the 
demand for labour. In the present state of things, notwith- 
standing the flourishing condition of our manufactures, and 
the numerous checks to our population, there is no practical 
problem so difficult as to find employment for the poor ; but 
this difficulty would evidently be aggravated a hundredfold, 
under the circumstances here supposed. . . . 

When the commons were all divided and difficulties began 
to occur in procuring potatoe grounds, the habit of early 
marriages which had been introduced, would occasion the 
most complicated distress ; and when, from the increasing 
population and diminishing sources of subsistence, the aver- 
age growth of potatoes was not more than the average con- 
sumption, a scarcity of potatoes would be in every respect, 
as probable, as a scarcity of wheat at present, and when it 
did arrive it would be beyond all comparison more dreadful. 

When the common people of a country live principally 
upon the dearest grain, as they do in England on wheat, they 
have great resources in a scarcity ; and barley, oats, rice, 
cheap soups, and potatoes, all present themselves as less 
expensive, yet at the same time wholesome means of nourish- 
ment ; but when their habitual food is the lowest in this scale, 
they appear to be absolutely without resources, except in the 
bark of trees, like the poor Swedes ; and a great portion of 
them must necessarily be starved. . . . 

The wages of labour will always be regulated by the 
proportion of the supply to the demand. And as, upon the 
potatoe system, a supply more than adequate to the demand 
would very soon take place, and this supply might be con- 



ch. x] IN DIFFERENT PIANS. 107 

tinued at a very cheap rate, on account of the cheapness 
of the food which would furnish it, the common price of 
labour would soon be regulated principally by the price of 
potatoes, instead of the price of wheat, as at present, and 
the rags and wretched cabins of Ireland would follow of 
course. . . . 

Upon the same principle, it would by no means be eligible 
that the cheap soups of Count Rumford should be adopted 
as the general food of the common people. They are excel- 
lent inventions for publick institutions, and as occasional 
resources ; but if they were once universally adopted by the 
poor it would be impossible to prevent the price of labour 
from being regulated by them ; and the labourer, though 
at first he might have more to spare for other expenses, 
besides food, would ultimately have much less to spare than 
before. . . . 



From the 

APPENDIX 

to the 

THIRD EDITION, 

1807. 



... It has been said by some that the natural checks to 
population will always be sufficient to keep it within bounds 
without resorting to any other aids ; and one ingenious 
writer has remarked that I have not deduced a single origi- 
nal fact from real observation to prove the inefficiency of 
the checks which already prevail.* These remarks are cor- 
rectly true, and are truisms exactly of the same kind as the 
assertion that man cannot live without food. For undoubt- 
edly as long as this continues to be a law of his nature, what 
are here called the natural checks cannot possibly fail of 
being effectual. Besides the curious truism that these asser- 
tions involve, they proceed upon the very strange supposi- 

I should like much to know what description of facts this gentleman 
had in view when he made this observation. If I could have found one of 
the kind which seems here to be alluded to, it would indeed have been 
truly original. 

108 



APPENDIX TO THIRD EDITION. 109 

tion that the ultimate object of my work is to check 
population, as if anything could be more desirable than the 
most rapid increase of population, unaccompanied by vice 
and misery. But of course my ultimate object is to diminish 
vice and misery, and any checks to population which may 
have been suggested are solely as means to accomplish this 
end. To a rational being the prudential check to popula- 
tion ought to be considered as equally natural with the check 
from poverty and premature mortality which these gentle- 
men seem to think so entirely sufficient and satisfactory; 
and it will readily occur to the intelligent reader that one 
class of checks may be substituted for another, not only 
without essentially diminishing the population of a country, 
but even under a constantly progressive increase of it. a 

On the possibility of increasing very considerably the 
effective population of this country, I have expressed my- 
self in some parts of my work more sanguinely perhaps than 
experience would warrant. I have said that in the course 
of some centuries it might contain two or three times as 
many inhabitants as at present, and yet every person be 
both better fed and better clothed. And in the comparison 
of the increase of population and food at the beginning of 
the essay that the argument might not seem to depend upon 
a difference of opinion respecting facts, I have allowed the 
produce of the earth to be unlimited, which is certainly 
going too far. It is not a little curious therefore that it 
should still continue to be urged against me as an argument 

a Botli Norway and Switzerland, where the preventive check prevails 
the most, are increasing with some rapidity in their population ; and in 
proportion to their means of subsistence, they can produce more males of 
a military age than any other country of Europe. 



110 APPENDIX 

that this country might contain two or three times as many 
inhabitants ; and it is still more curious that some persons 
who have allowed the different ratios of increase on which 
all my principal conclusions are founded, have still asserted 
that no difficulty or distress could arise from population 
till the productions of the earth could not be further in- 
creased. I doubt whether a stronger instance could readily 
be produced of the total absence of the power of reasoning 
than this assertion after such a concession affords. It in- 
volves a greater absurdity than the saying that because a 
farm can by proper management be made to carry an addi- 
tional stock of four head of cattle every year, that therefore 
no difficulty or inconvenience would arise if an additional 
forty were placed in it yearly. 

The power of the earth to produce subsistence is certainly 
not unlimited, but it is strictly speaking indefinite ; that is, 
its limits are not defined, and the time will probably never 
arrive when we shall be able to say that no further labour 
or ingenuity of man could make further additions to it. But 
the power of obtaining an additional quantity of food from 
the earth by proper management and in a certain time, 
has the most remote relation imaginable to the power of 
keeping pace with an unrestricted increase of population. 
The knowledge and industry which would enable the natives 
of New Holland to make the best use of the natural resources 
of their country must, without an absolute miracle, come to 
them gradually and slowly, and even then as it has amply 
appeared would be perfectly ineffectual as to the grand 
object; but the passions which prompt to the increase of 
population are always in full vigour, and are ready to pro- 



TO THIRD EDITION. Ill 

duce their full effect even in a state of the most helpless 
ignorance and barbarism. It will be readily allowed that 
the reason why New Holland in proportion to its natural 
powers is not so populous as China, is the want of those 
human institutions which protect property and encourage 
industry ; but the misery and vice which prevail almost 
equally in both countries from the tendency of population 
to increase faster than the means of subsistence, form a 
distinct consideration and arise from a distinct cause. They 
arise from the incomplete discipline of the human passions, 
and no person with the slightest knowledge of mankind has 
ever had the hardihood to affirm that human institutions 
could completely discipline all the human passions. But I 
have already treated this subject so fully in the course of the 
work that I am ashamed to add anything further here. 

The next grand objection which has been urged against 
me is my denial of the right of the poor to support. 

Those who would maintain this objection with any degree 
of consistency are bound to show that the different ratios of 
increase with respect to population and food which I at- 
tempted to establish at the beginning of the essay, are 
fundamentally erroneous ; since on the supposition of their 
being true, the conclusion is inevitable. If it appear, as it 
must appear on these ratios being allowed, that it is not pos- 
sible for the industry of man to produce on a limited territory 
sufficient food for all that would be born if every person 
were to marry at the time when he was first prompted to 
it by inclination, it follows irresistibly that all cannot have 
a right to support. Let us for a moment suppose an equal 
division of property in any country. If under these circum- 



112 APPENDIX 

stances one half of the society were by prudential habits so 
to regulate their increase that it exactly kept pace with their 
increasing cultivation, it is evident that the individuals of 
this portion of society would always remain as rich as at 
first. If the other half during the same time married at the 
age of puberty, when they would probably feel most inclined 
to it, it is evident that they would soon become wretchedly 
poor. But upon what plea of justice or equity could this 
second half of the society claim a right in virtue of their 
poverty to any of the possessions of the first half? This 
poverty, had arisen entirely from their own ignorance or 
imprudence ; and it would be perfectly clear from the man- 
ner in which it had come upon them that if their plea were 
admitted, and they were not suffered to feel the particular 
evils resulting from their conduct, the whole society would 
shortly be involved in the same degree of wretchedness. 
Any voluntary and temporary assistance which might be 
given as a measure of charity by the richer members of the 
society to the others while they were learning to make a 
better use of the lessons of nature would be quite a distinct 
consideration, and without doubt most properly applied ; 
but nothing like a claim of right to support can possibly be 
maintained till we deny the premises ; till we affirm that the 
American increase of population is a miracle, and does not 
arise from the greater facility of obtaining the means of 
subsistence.* 

a It has been said that I have written a quarto volume to prove that 
population increases in a geometrical and food in an arithmetical ratio, 
but this is not quite true. The first of these propositions I considered as 
proved the moment the American increase was related, and the second 
proposition as soon as it was enunciated. The chief object of my work 



TO THIRD EDITION. 113 

In fact whatever we may say in our declamations on this 
subject, almost the whole of our conduct is founded on the 
non-existence of this right. If the poor had really a claim 
of right to support, I do not think that any man could justify 
his wearing broadcloth or eating as much meat as he likes 
for dinner ; and those who assert this right, and yet are roll- 
ing in their carriages, living every day luxuriously, and keep- 
ing even their horses on food of which their fellow-creatures 
are in want, must be allowed to act with the greatest incon- 
sistency. Taking an individual instance without reference to 
consequences, it appears to me that Mr. Godwin's argument 
is irresistible. Can it be pretended for a moment that a 
part of the mutton which I expect to eat to-day would not 
be much more beneficially employed on some hard-working 
labourer who has not perhaps tasted animal food for the last 
week, or on some poor family who cannot command suffi- 
cient food of any kind fully to satisfy the cravings of hunger? 
If these instances were not of a nature to multiply in pro- 
portion as such wants were indiscriminately gratified, the 
gratification of them, as it would be practicable, would be 
highly beneficial ; and in this case I should not have the 
smallest hesitation in most fully allowing the right. But as 
it appears clearly both from theory and experience that if 



was to inquire what effects these laws, which I considered as established 
in the first six pnges, had produced and were likely to produce on society; 
a subject not very readily exhausted. The principal fault of my details 
is that they are not sufficiently particular; but this was a fault which it 
was not in my power to remedy. It would be a most curious, and to every 
philosophical mind a most interesting piece of information, to know the 
exact share of the full power of increase which each existing check pre- 
vents ; but at present I see no mode of obtaining such information. 



114 APPENDIX 

the claim were allowed it would soon increase beyond the 
possibility of satisfying it, and that the practical attempt to 
do so would involve the human race in the most wretched 
and universal poverty, it follows necessarily that our conduct 
which denies the right is more suited to the present state of 
our being than our declamations which allow it. 

The great author of nature indeed with that wisdom which 
is apparent in all His works has not left this conclusion to 
the cold and speculative consideration of general conse- 
quences. By making the passion of self-love beyond com- 
parison stronger than the passion of benevolence, He 
has at once impelled us to that line of conduct which is 
essential to the preservation of the human race. If all 
that might be born could be adequately supplied, we can- 
not doubt that He would have made the desire of giving 
to others as ardent as that of supplying ourselves. But 
since under the present constitution of things this is not 
so, He has enjoined every man to pursue as his primary 
object his own safety and happiness, and the safety and 
happiness of those immediately connected with him; and 
it is highly instructive to observe that in proportion as the 
sphere contracts and the power of giving effectual assistance 
increases, the desire increases at the same time. In the 
case of children who have certainly a claim of right to the 
support and protection of their parents, we generally find 
parental affection nearly as strong as self-love ; and except 
in a few anomalous cases the last morsel will be divided into 
equal shares. 

By this wise provision the most ignorant are led to pro- 
mote the general happiness, an end which they would have 



TO THIRD EDITION. 115 

totally failed to attain if the moving principle of their con- 
duct had been benevolence." Benevolence indeed as the 
great and constant source of action, would require the most 
perfect knowledge of causes and effects, and therefore can 
only be the attribute of the Deity. In a being so short- 
sighted as man it would lead into the grossest errors, and 
soon transform the fair and cultivated soil of civilized society 
into a dreary scene of want and confusion. . . . 

Among those who have objected to my declaration that the 
poor have no claim of right to support is Mr. Young, who 
with a harshness not quite becoming a candid inquirer after 
truth has called my proposal for the gradual abolition of the 
poor-laws a horrible plan, and asserted that the execution of 
it would be a most iniquitous proceeding. Let this plan 
however be compared for a moment with that which he him- 
self and others have proposed of fixing the sum of the poor's 
rates, which on no account is to be increased. Under such 
a law, if the distresses of the poor were to be aggravated ten- 
fold, either by the increase of numbers or the recurrence of 
a scarcity, the same sum would invariably be appropriated to 
their relief. If the statute which gives the poor a right to 
support were to remain unexpunged, we should add to the 
cruelty of starving them the injustice of still professing to 
relieve them. If this statute were expunged or altered we 
should virtually deny the right of the poor to support, and 
only retain the absurdity of saying that they had a right to a 



a In saying this let me not be supposed to give the slightest sanction to 
the system of morals inculcated in the " Fable of the Bees," a system which 
I consider as absolutely false, and directly contrary to the just definition of 
virtue. The great art of Dr. Mandeville consisted in misnomers. 



116 APPENDIX 

certain sum, an absurdity on which. Mr. Young justly com- 
ments with much severity in the case of France. In both 
cases the hardships which they would suffer would be much 
more severe, and would come upon them in a much more 
unprepared state than upon the plan proposed in the 
essay. 

According to this plan all that are already married, and 
even all that are engaged to marry during the course of the 
year, and all their children, would be relieved as usual ; and 
only those who marry subsequently, and who of course may 
be supposed to have made better provision for contingencies, 
would be out of the pale of relief. 

Any plan for the abolition of the poor-laws must pre-sup- 
pose a general acknowledgment that they are essentially 
wrong and that it is necessary to tread back our steps. With 
this acknowledgment, whatever objections may be made to 
my plan in the too frequently short-sighted views of policy, I 
have no fear of comparing it with any other that has yet 
been advanced in point of justice and humanity ; and of 
course the terms iniquitous and horrible " pass by me like 
the idle wind which I regard not." 

Mr. Young it would appear has now given up this plan. 
He has pleaded for the privilege of being inconsistent, and 
has given such reasons for it that I am disposed to acquiesce 
in them. . . . 

Mr. Young objects very strongly to that passage of the 
essay in which I observe that a man who plunges himself 
into poverty and dependence by marrying without any 
prospect of being able to maintain his family, has more 
reason to accuse himself than the price of labour, the parish, 



TO THIRD EDITION. 117 

the avarice of the rich, the institutions of society, and the 
dispensations of Providence ; except as far as he has been 
deceived by those who ought to have instructed him. In 
answer to this, Mr. Young says that the poor fellow is justified 
in every one of these complaints, that of Providence alone 
excepted ; and that seeing other cottagers living comfortably 
with three or four acres of land, he has cause to accuse insti- 
tutions which deny him that which the rich could well spare, 
and which would give him all he wants." I would beg Mr. 
Young for a moment to consider how the matter would stand 
if his own plan were completely executed. After all the 
commons had been divided as he has proposed, if a labourer 
had more than one son, in what respect would the second or 
third be in a different situation from the man that I have 
supposed? Mr. Young cannot posssibly mean to say that 
if he had the very natural desire of marrying at twenty, he 
would still have a right to complain that the society did not 
give him a house and three or four acres of land. . . . 

To much of Mr. Young's plan as he has at present ex- 
plained it I should by no means object. The peculiar evil 
which I apprehended from it, that of taking the poor from 
the consumption of wheat and feeding them on milk and 
potatoes, might certainly be avoided by a limitation of the 
number of cottages ; and I entirely agree with him in think- 
ing that we should not be deterred from making 500,000 
families more comfortable because we cannot extend the 
same relief to all the rest. I have indeed myself ventured 
to recommend a general improvement of cottages, and even 
the cow system on a limited scale ; and perhaps, with proper 

a Annals of Agriculture, No. 239, p. 226. 



113 APPENDIX 

precautions, a certain portion of land might be given to a 
considerable body of the labouring classes. 

If the law which entitles the poor to support were to be 
repealed, I should most highly approve of any plan which 
would tend to render such repeal more palatable on its first 
promulgation ; and in this view some kind of compact with 
the poor might be very desirable. A plan of letting land to 
labourers under certain conditions has lately been tried in 
the parish of Long Newnton, in Gloucestershire ; and the 
result with a general proposal founded on it has been sub- 
mitted to the public by Mr. Estcourt. The present success 
has been very striking ; but in this and every other case of 
the kind we should always bear in mind that no experiment 
respecting a provision for the poor can be said to be com- 
plete till succeeding generations have arisen. I doubt if 
ever there has been an instance of anything like a liberal 
institution for the poor which did not succeed on its first 
establishment, however it might have failed afterwards. 
But this consideration should by no means deter us from 
making such experiments when present good is to be ob- 
tained by them, and a future overbalance of evil is not justly 
to be apprehended. It should only make us less rash in 
drawing our inferences. 

With regard to the general question of the advantages to 

a In any plan, particularly of a distribution of land as a compensation 
for the relief given by the poor laws, the succeeding generations would form 
the grand difficulty. All others would be perfectly trivial in comparison. 
For a time everything might go on very smoothly and the rates be much 
diminished ; but afterwards they would either increase again as rapidly as 
before or the scheme would be exposed to all the same objections which 
have been made to mine, without the same justice and consistency to palli- 
ate them. 



TO THIRD EDITION. 119 

the lower classes of possessing land, it should be recollected 
that such possessions are by no means a novelty. Formerly 
this system prevailed in almost every country with which we 
are acquainted, and prevails at present in many countries 
where the peasants are far from being remarkable for their 
comforts, but are on the contrary very poor and particularly 
subject to scarcities. With respect to this latter evil indeed 
it is quite obvious that a peasantry which depends princi- 
pally on its possessions in land must be more exposed to it 
than one which depends on the general wages of labour. 
When a year of deficient crops occurs in a country of any 
extent and diversity of soil, it is always partial, and some 
districts are more affected than others. But when a bad 
crop of grass, corn, or potatoes, or a mortality among cattle, 
falls on a poor man whose principal dependence is on two 
or three acres of land, he is in the most deplorable and help- 
less situation. He is comparatively without money to pur- 
chase supplies, and is not for a moment to be compared 
with the man who depends on the wages of labour, and who 
will of course be able to purchase that portion of the general 
crop, whatever it may be, to which his relative situation in 
the society entitles him. In Sweden, where the farmers' 
labourers are paid principally in land and often keep two 
or three cows, it is not uncommon for the peasants of one 
district to be almost starving while their neighbours at a 
little distance are living in comparative plenty. It will be 
found indeed generally that in almost all the countries which 
are particularly subject to scarcities and famines, either the 
farms are very small or the labourers are paid principally in 
land. China, Indostan, and the former state of the High- 



120 APPENDIX 

lands of Scotland, furnish some proofs among many others 
of the truth of this observation ; and in reference to the 
small properties of France, Mr. Young himself in his Tour 
particularly notices the distress arising from the least failure 
of the crops, and observes that such a deficiency as in Eng- 
land passes almost without notice, in France is attended with 
dreadful calamities." 

Should any plan therefore of assisting the poor by land be 
adopted in this country, it would be absolutely essential to 
its ultimate success to prevent them from making it their 
principal dependence. And this might probably be done 
by attending strictly to the two following rules. Not to let 
the division of land be so great as to interrupt the cottager 
essentially in his usual labours ; and always to stop in the 
further distribution of land and cottages when the price of 
labour, independently of any assistance from land, would not 
at the average price of corn maintain three or at least two 
children. Could the matter be so ordered that the labourer 
in working for others should still continue to earn the same 
real command over the necessaries of life that he did before, 
a very great accession of comfort and happiness might accrue 
to the poor from the possession of land without any evil that 
I can foresee at present. But if these points were not at- 
tended to, I should certainly fear an approximation to the 
state of the poor in France, Sweden, and Ireland ; nor do I 
think that any of the partial experiments that have yet taken 
place afford the slightest presumption to the contrary. The 

a Travels in France, vol. i. c. xii. p. 409. That country will probably be 
the least liable to scarcities in which agriculture is carried on as the most 
flourishing manufacture of the state. 






TO THIRD EDITION. 121 

result of these experiments is indeed exactly such as one 
should have expected. Who could ever have doubted that 
if without lowering the price of labour, or taking the labourer 
off from his usual occupations, you could give him the pro- 
duce of one or two acres of land and the benefit of a cow, 
you would decidedly raise his condition? But it by no 
means follows that he would retain this advantage if the sys- 
tem were so extended as to make the land his principal 
dependence, to lower the price of labour, and in the lan- 
guage of Mr. Young, to take the poor from the consumption 
of wheat and feed them on milk and potatoes. It does not 
appear to me so marvellous as it does to Mr. Young that the 
very Same system, which in Lincolnshire and Rutlandshire 
may produce now the most comfortable peasantry in the 
British dominions, should in the end if extended without 
proper precautions assimilate the condition of the labourers 
of this country to that of the lower classes of the Irish. . . . 
There is only one subject more which I shall notice, and 
that is rather a matter of feeling than of argument. Many 
persons whose understandings are not so constituted that 
they can regulate their belief or disbelief by their likes or 
dislikes, have professed their perfect conviction of the truth 
of the general principles contained in the essay, but at 
the same time have lamented this conviction as throwing a 
darker shade over our views of human nature, and tending 
particularly to narrow our prospects of future improvement. 
In these feelings I cannot agree with them. If from a re- 
view of the past I could not only believe that a fundamental 
and very extraordinary improvement in human society was 
possible, but feel a firm confidence that it would take place, 



122 APPENDIX 

I should undoubtedly be grieved to find that I had over- 
looked some cause the operation of which would at once 
blast my hopes. But if the contemplation of the past 
history of mankind, from which alone we can judge of the 
future, renders it almost impossible to feel such confidence, 
I confess that I had much rather believe that some real and 
deeply-seated difficulty existed, the constant struggle with 
which was calculated to rouse the natural inactivity of man, 
to call forth his faculties, and invigorate and improve his 
mind, — a species of difficulty which it must be allowed is 
most eminently and peculiarly suited to a state of probation, 
than that nearly all the evils of life might with the most per- 
fect facility be removed but for the perverseness and wicked- 
ness of those who influence human institutions. a 

A person who held this latter opinion must necessarily 
live in a constant state of irritation and disappointment. 
The ardent expectations with which he might begin life 
would soon receive the most cruel check. The regular 
progress of society under the most favourable circumstances, 
would to him appear slow and unsatisfactory; but instead 
even of this regular progress his eye would be more fre- 
quently presented with retrograde movements and the most 
disheartening reverses. The changes to which he had 
looked forward with delight would be found big with new 

o The misery and vice arising from the pressure of the population too 
hard against tne limits of subsistence, and the misery and vice arising from 
promiscuous intercourse, may be considered as the Scylla and Charybdis 
of human life. That it is possible for each individual to steer clear of both 
these rocks is certainly true, and a truth which I have endeavoured strongly 
to maintain ; but that these rocks do not form a difficulty independent of 
human institutions no person with any knowledge of the subject can venture 
to assert. 



TO THIRD EDITIOX. 123 

and unlooked-for evils, and the characters on which he had 
reposed the most confidence would be seen frequently de- 
serting his favourite cause, either from the lessons of expe- 
rience or the temptations of wealth and power. In this 
state of constant disappointment he would be but too apt to 
attribute everything to the worst motives, he would be in- 
clined to give up the cause of improvement in despair, and 
judging of the whole from a part, nothing but a peculiar 
goodness of heart and amiableness of disposition could pre- 
serve him from that sickly and disgusting misanthropy which 
is but too frequently the end of such characters. 

On the contrary, a person who held the other opinion, as 
he would set out with more moderate expectations, would 
of course be less liable to disappointment. A comparison 
of the best with the worst states of society, and the obvious 
inference from analogy that the best were capable of further 
improvement, would constantly present to his mind a pros- 
pect sufficiently animating to warrant his most persevering 
exertions. But aware of the difficulties with which the sub- 
ject was surrounded, knowing how often in the attempt to 
attain one object some other had been lost, and that though 
society had made rapid advances in some directions it had 
been comparatively stationary in others, he would be con- 
stantly prepared for failures. These failures instead of cre- 
ating despair would only create knowledge, instead of check- 
ing his ardour would give it a wiser and more successful 
direction, and having founded his opinion of mankind on 
broad and general grounds, the disappointment of any par- 
ticular views would not change this opinion : but even in 
declining age he would probably be found believing as 



124 APPENDIX TO THIRD EDITION. 

firmly in the reality and general prevalence of virtue as in 
the existence and frequency of vice, and to the last looking 
forward with a just confidence to those improvements in so- 
ciety which the history of the past, in spite of all the reverses 
with which it is accompanied, seems clearly to warrant. 

It may be true that if ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be 
wise ; but if ignorance be not bliss, as in the present in- 
stance, if all false views of society must not only impede 
decidedly the progress of improvement, but necessarily ter- 
minate in the most bitter disappointments to the individuals 
who formed them, I shall always think that the feelings and 
prospects of those who make the justest estimates of our 
future expectations are the most consolatory, and that the 
characters of this description are happier themselves, at the 
same time that they are beyond comparison more likely to 
contribute to the improvement and happiness of society. 



From the 

PREFACE 

to the 

FIFTH EDITION, 
1817. 



This essay was first published at a period of extensive 
warfare, combined, from peculiar circumstances, with a most 
prosperous foreign commerce. 

It came before the public, therefore, at a time when there 
would be an extraordinary demand for men, and very little 
disposition to suppose the possibility of any evil arising from 
the redundancy of population. Its success under these 
disadvantages was greater than could have been reasonably 
expected • and it may be presumed that it will not lose its 
interest, after a period of a different description has suc- 
ceeded, which has in the most marked manner illustrated 
its principles and confirmed its conclusions. . . . 

East India College, June 7, 181 7. 
125 



From the 

APPENDIX 

to the 

FIFTH EDITION, 
1817. 



Since the publication of the last edition of this essay in 
1807 two works have appeared, the avowed objects of which 
are directly to oppose its principles and conclusions. These 
are " The Principles of Population and Production," by Mr. 
Weyland ; and " An Inquiry into the Principle of Popula- 
tion," by Mr. James Grahame. 

I would willingly leave the question as it at present stands 
to the judgment of the public without any attempt on my 
part to influence it further by a more particular reply ; but 
as I professed my readiness to enter into the discussion of 
any serious objections to my principles and conclusions 
which were brought forward in a spirit of candour and 
truth, and as one at least of the publications above men- 
tioned may be so characterized, and the other is by no 
means deficient in personal respect, I am induced shortly 
to notice them. . . . 

126 



APPENDIX TO FIFTH EDITION. \T1 

Mr. Grahame in his second chapter, speaking of the ten- 
dency exhibited by the law of human increase to a redun- 
dancy of population, observes that some philosophers have 
considered this tendency as a mark of the foresight of 
nature, which has thus provided a ready supply for the waste 
of life occasioned by human vices and passions ; while 
" others, of whom Mr. Malthus is the leader, regard the 
vices and follies of human nature and their various pro- 
ducts, famine, disease, and war, as benevolent remedies by 
which nature has enabled human beings to correct the dis- 
orders that would arise from that redundance of popula- 
tion which the unrestrained operation of her laws would 
create." x 

These are the opinions imputed to me and the philoso- 
phers with whom I am associated. If the imputation were 
just, we have certainly on many accounts great reason to 
be ashamed of ourselves. For what are we made to say? 
In the first place, we are stated to assert that famine is a 
benevolent remedy for want of food, as redundance of 
population admits of no other interpretation than that of a 
people ill supplied with the means of subsistence, and 
consequently the benevolent remedy of famine here noticed 
can only apply to the disorders arising from scarcity of 
food. 

Secondly, We are said to affirm that nature enables human 
beings by means of diseases to correct the disorders that 
would arise from a redundance of population — that is, that 
mankind willingly and purposely create diseases with a view 
to prevent those diseases which are the necessary conse- 

1 P. IOO. 



128 APPENDIX 

quences of a redundant population, and are not worse or 
more mortal than the means of prevention. 

And thirdly, it is imputed to us generally that we consider 
the vices and follies of mankind as benevolent remedies for 
the disorders arising from a redundant population, and it 
follows as a matter of course that these vices ought to be 
encouraged rather than reprobated. 

It would not be easy to compress in so small a compass 
a greater quantity of absurdity, inconsistency, and unfounded 
assertion. 

The two first imputations may perhaps be peculiar to Mr. 
Grahame, and protection from them may be found in their 
gross absurdity and inconsistency. With regard to the third 
it must be allowed that it has not the. merit of novelty. 
Although it is scarcely less absurd than the two others, and 
has been shown to be an opinion nowhere to be found in the 
essay nor legitimately to be inferred from any part of it, it 
has been continually repeated in various quarters for four- 
teen years, and now appears in the pages of Mr. Grahame. 
For the last time I will now notice it, and should it still 
continue to be brought forward I think I may be fairly 
excused from paying the slightest further attention either 
to the imputation itself or to those who advance it. 

If I had merely stated that the tendency of the human 
race to increase faster than the means of subsistence was 
kept to a level with these means by some or other of the 
forms of vice and misery, and that these evils were abso- 
lutely unavoidable and incapable of being diminished by 
any human efforts, still I could not with any semblance of 
justice be accused of considering vice and misery as the 



TO FIFTH EDITION. 129 

remedies of these evils instead of the very evils themselves. 
As well nearly might I be open to Mr. Grahame's imputa- 
tions of considering the famine and disease necessarily aris- 
ing from a scarcity of food as a benevolent remedy for the 
evils which this scarcity occasions. 

But I have not so stated the proposition. I have not 
considered the evils of vice and misery arising from a re- 
dundant population as unavoidable and incapable of being 
diminished. On the contrary, I have pointed out a mode 
by which these evils may be removed or mitigated by 
removing or mitigating their cause. I have endeavoured to 
show that this may be done consistently with human virtue 
and happiness. I have never considered any possible 
increase of population as an evil, except as far as it might 
increase the proportion of vice and misery. Vice and 
misery, and these alone, are the evils which it has been my 
great object to contend against. I have expressly proposed 
moral restraint as their rational and proper remedy; and 
whether the remedy be good or bad, adequate or inade- 
quate, the proposal itself and the stress which I have laid 
upon it is an incontrovertible proof that I never can have 
considered vice and misery as themselves remedies. 

But not only does the general tenour of my work and the 
specific object of the latter part of it clearly show that I do 
not consider vice and misery as remedies, but particular pas- 
sages in various parts of it are so distinct on the subject as 
not to admit of being misunderstood by the most perverse 
blindness. 

It is therefore quite inconceivable that any writer with the 
slightest pretensions to respectability should venture to bring 



130 APPENDIX 

forward such imputations, and it must be allowed to show 
either such a degree of ignorance or such a total want of 
candour as utterly to disqualify him for the discussion of 
such subjects. 

But Mr. Grahame's misrepresentations are not confined 
to the passage above referred to. In his introduction he 
observes that in order to check a redundant population, the 
evils of which I consider as much nearer than Mr. Wallace, 
I "recommend immediate recourse to human efforts to the 
restraint prescribed by Condorcet for the correction or miti- 
gation of the evil." This is an assertion entirely without 
foundation. I have never adverted to the check suggested 
by Condorcet without the most marked disapprobation. 
Indeed I should always particularly reprobate any artificial 
and unnatural modes of checking population, both on 
account of their immorality and their tendency to remove 
a necessary stimulus to industry. If it were possible for 
each married couple to limit by a wish the number of their 
children, there is certainly reason to fear that the indolence 
of the human race would be very greatly increased, and 
that neither the population of individual countries nor of 
the whole earth would ever reach its natural and proper 
extent. But the restraints which I have recommended are 
quite of a different character. They are not only pointed 
out by reason and sanctioned by religion, but tend in the 
most marked manner to stimulate industry. It is not easy 
to conceive a more powerful encouragement to exertion and 
good conduct than the looking forward to marriage as a 
state peculiarly desirable : but only to be enjoyed in com- 
fort by the acquisition of habits of industry, economy, and 



TO FIFTH EDITION. 131 

prudence. And it is in this light that I have always wished 
to place it. . . . 

With regard to the substance and aim of Mr. Grahame's 
work, it seems to be intended to show that emigration is the 
remedy provided by nature for a redundant population, and 
that if this remedy cannot be adequately applied there is 
no other that can be proposed which will not lead to con- 
sequences worse than the evil itself. These are two points 
which I have considered at length in the essay, and it 
cannot be necessary to repeat any of the arguments here. 
Emigration, if it could be freely used, has been shown to be 
a resource which could not be of long duration. It cannot 
therefore under any circumstances be considered as an ade- 
quate remedy. The latter position is a matter of opinion, 
and may rationally be held by any person who sees reason 
to think it well founded. It appears to me, I confess, that 
experience most decidedly contradicts it, but to those who 
think otherwise there is nothing more to be said than that 
they are bound in consistency to acquiesce in the necessary 
consequences of their opinion. These consequences are 
that the poverty and wretchedness arising from a redun- 
dant population, or in other words from very low wages and 
want of employment, are absolutely irremediable and must be 
continually increasing as the population of the earth proceeds ; 
and that all the efforts of legislative wisdom and private 
charity, though they may afford a wholesome and beneficial 
exercise of human virtue and may occasionally alter the 
distribution and vary the pressure of human misery, can do 
absolutely nothing towards diminishing the general amount 
or checking the increasing weight of this pressure. . . . 



132 APPENDIX 

It was my object in the two chapters on Moral Restraint, 
and its Effects on Society, to show that the evils arising from 
the principle of population were exactly of the same nature 
as the evils arising from the excessive or irregular gratifica- 
tion of the human passions in general, and that from the 
existence of these evils we had no more reason to conclude 
that the principle of increase was too strong for the purpose 
intended by the Creator, than to infer from the existence of 
the vices arising from the human passions that these passions 
required diminution or extinction, instead of regulation and 
direction. 

If this view of the subject be allowed to be correct, it 
will naturally follow that notwithstanding the acknowledged 
evils occasioned by the principle of population, the advan- 
tages derived from it under the present constitution of 
things may very greatly overbalance them. 

A slight sketch of the nature of these advantages as far 
as the main object of the essay would allow was given in 
the two chapters to which I have alluded ; but the subject 
has lately been pursued with great ability in the work of 
Mr. Sumner on the " Records of the Creation; " and I am 
happy to refer to it as containing a masterly development 
and completion of views of which only an intimation could 
be given in the essay. 

I fully agree with Mr. Sumner as to the beneficial effects 
which result from the principle of population, and feel en- 
tirely convinced that the natural tendency of the human 
race to increase faster than the possible increase of the 
means of subsistence could not be either destroyed or essen- 
tially diminished without diminishing that hope of rising and 



TO FIFTH EDITION. 133 

fear of falling in society so necessary to the improvement of 
the human faculties and the advancement of human happi- 
ness. But with this conviction on my mind, I feel no wish 
to alter the view which I have given of the evils arising 
from the principle of population. These evils do not lose 
their name or nature because they are overbalanced by 
good, and to consider them in a different light on this ac- 
count and cease to call them evils would be as irrational as 
the objecting to call the irregular indulgences of passion 
vicious, and to affirm that they lead to misery because 
our passions are the main sources of human virtue and 
happiness. 

I have always considered the principle of population as a 
law peculiarly suited to a state of discipline and trial. In- 
deed I believe that, in the whole range of the laws of nature 
with which we are acquainted, not one can be pointed out 
which in so remarkable a manner tends to strengthen and 
confirm this scriptural view of the state of man on earth. 
And as each individual has the power of avoiding the evil 
consequences to himself and society resulting from the prin- 
ciple of population by the practice of a virtue clearly dic- 
tated to him by the light of nature, and sanctioned by 
revealed religion, it must be allowed that the ways of God 
to man with regard to this great law of nature are completely 
vindicated. 

I have therefore certainly felt surprise as well as regret 
that no inconsiderable part of the objections which have 
been made to the principles and conclusions of the " Essay 
on Population " has come from persons for whose moral 
and religious character I have so high a respect that it would 



134 APPENDIX TO FIFTH EDITION. 

have been particularly gratifying to me to obtain their ap- 
probation and sanction. This effect has been attributed to 
some expressions used in the course of the work which have 
been thought too harsh, and not sufficiently indulgent to 
the weakness of human nature and the feelings of Christian 
charity. 

It is probable that having found the bow bent too much 
one way I was induced to bend it too much the other in 
order to make it straight. But I shall always be quite ready 
to blot out any part of the work which is considered by a 
competent tribunal as having a tendency to prevent the bow 
from becoming finally straight and to impede the progress 
of truth. In deference to this tribunal I have already ex- 
punged the passages which have been most objected to, 
and I have made some few further corrections of the same 
kind in the present edition. By these alterations I hope 
and believe that the work has been improved without im- 
pairing its principles. But I still trust that whether it is 
read with or without these alterations, every reader of can- 
dour must acknowledge that the practical design uppermost 
in the mind of the writer, with whatever want of judgment 
it may have been executed, is to improve the condition and 
increase the happiness of the lower classes of society. 




